NIPC Law

Author Rklawton   Licence   CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Yesterday the Intellectual Property Office added a new para  125.17.8  on the Formstein defence  to its Manual of Patent Practice .  Considering that the defence is a doctrine of German law and that there has been no firm decision on whether that doctrine applies to this country, that is quite remarkable. Para 125.17.8 describes the doctrine as: "a principle developed under German patent law in relation to infringement and the doctrine of equivalents (DoE), whereby if an alleged infringer can show that an equivalent is a non-inventive variant of the claimed invention, then the patent’s scope for the purposes of determining any infringement is held to its normal construction – in other words the DoE does not apply." I have referred to the doctrine in  Patents - Technetix BV and others v Teleste Ltd . on 19 Feb 2010 and  Patents - Facebook Ireland Ltd v Vox...

Jane Lambert Patents Court ( HH Judge Hacon)  Technetix BV and another v Teleste Ltd   [2019] EWHC 3106 (Pat) (18 Nov 2019) This was a claim for patent infringement and a counterclaim for revocation on grounds of anticipation , obviousness  and added matter. There was also an application for unconditional and conditional amendments to the patent. The claim and counterclaim came on before His Honour Judge Hacon sitting as a judge of the Patents Court in  Technetix BV and another v Teleste Ltd [2019] EWHC 3106 (Pat) (18 Nov 2019). His Honour tried the action in May and delivered judgment on 18 Nov 2019. The learned judge held at paragraph [122] of his judgment that the patent was invalid on all three grounds .and refused the amendments though he found that the patent would have been infringed hand it been valid. The Patent The patent in suit was European patent 1259074 for a c ommunication system comprising means for preventing intermodulati...