NIPC Law

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Arnold):  Generics (UK) Ltd (t/a Mylan) and another v Yeda Research And Development Company Ltd [2017] EWHC 2629 (Pat) (26 Oct 2017) On Wednesday, 28 Feb 2018 I gave a talk to the C5 Pharma and Patent Litigation Conference   at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Amsterdam. Mine was one of three talks on the topic Infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents.  I discussed the law of England in the light of the Supreme Court's decision in Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and others  [2017] UKSC 48, [2017] Bus LR 1731 while  Paul Reeskamp  and Philipp Cepl , who practise in the Netherlands and Germany, considered the topic in the light of the developing case law in their jurisdictions. I had previously written about the Supreme Court's judgment in  The Supreme Court's Judgment in Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and Others: how to understand it and why it is important   13 July 2017. Possibly because Lord Ne...

According to drugs.com , pregabalin is an anti-epileptic drug which works by slowing down impulses in the brain that cause seizures. A European patent for the drug was granted to Warner-Lambert Co, LLC  ( "Warner-Lambert" )(now a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc . ) under EP number 0 641 330. That patent expired on 17 May 2013 but was extended by a supplementary protection certificate ( "SPC" ) until 17 May 2018. That SPC was allowed to lapse on 14 Oct 2013 and Warner-Lambert's data exclusivity in respect of the data used to obtain the marketing authorisation for prehabalin expired on 8 July 2014. Since then anybody has been free to make, import or sell pregabalin for treating epilepsy and generalized anxiety disorder in the United Kingdom and several companies including some of the parties to these proceedings have done just that. Drugs.com notes that pregabalin also affects chemicals in the brain that send pain signals across the nervous system. ...

Ranbaxy (UK) Ltd. v AstraZeneca AB [2011] EWHC 1831 (Pat) (15 July 2011) raises an interesting point on the interpretation of claims. To be more precise "Swiss style claims". Swiss style claims get their name from the legal advice of the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office of 30 May 1984 (OJ EPO 581) on the patentability of compounds used in the manufacture of a medicine for the treatment of a disease. As Mr. Justice Kitchin explained between paragraphs [42] and [60] this convoluted form of words was devised to get around the exclusion by art 52 (4) of the European Patent Convention before its revision in 2000 of "methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body." Lord Justice Jacob discussed Swiss style claims in some detail in Actavis UK Ltd v Merck & Co Inc [2008] EWCA Civ 444 (21 May 2008). The usual context in which Swiss style claims are considered is "second...