Case Reports

Over a decade ago, in 2013, when I was writing for the IPKat, I wrote a post opining that the UPC Agreement should produce a harmonisation of the substantive law of patent infringement across...

The first batch of unitary patents was registered this week. According to the European Patent Register, 609 requests for unitary effect have been allowed and published on Monday 12 June 2023.

Today is Unitary Patent day!In principle, a Unitary Patent could be obtained for a European Patent granted from 1 June 2023. But in practice, the European Patent Office only publishes grant of...

After more than 50 years in the making, the Unified Patent Court finally launches today – 1 June 2023. This represents the most significant development in European patent law and practice since the...

Owners of EP applications and patents will have almost certainly have had requests by now asking whether they wish to opt their patents/applications out of the jurisdiction of the UPC.

Key points: OPT-OUT / OPT-IN / Art. 83 UPCA / TRANSITIONAL REGIMEImmediately prior to the launch of the UPC, there is heated debate among patent owners as to whether or not to declare an "opt-out"...

On 21 and 22 March a panel from EIP Latest hosted an informative webinar where they discussed everything your business needs to know about the effect of the incoming Unitary Patent and Unified Patent...

The grant of a European Patent allows patent rights to be obtained in respect of over 35 states by means of the respective validation procedures for those states.

Following news of Germany's depositing its instrument of ratification of the UPC agreement on 17 February, mark your calendars for 1 June when the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will begin operations in...

The Registry of the Unified Patent Court maintains a number of Registers which are publicly accessible via their website at www.unified-patent-court.org.

Member States of the EU that have already ratified the UPC Agreement (or in the case of Germany has indicated it will do so) and so will take part in the UPC as soon as it commences are:Austria,...

The Unitary Patent will be a single patent right, obtained via the European Patent Office, covering all EU Member States which have ratified the agreement at the patent grant date.

The project to establish a Unitary Patent in Europe and a Unified Patent Court to handle patent infringement litigation for European patents is underway again.

The subject of today's IPKat post - The Cost of Knowledge - by Darren Smyth concerns a campaign against Elsevier, the publisher of academic journals.

Recent decisions of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO are now updated continuously on the EPO website.In today's IPKat blog, Darren Smyth highlights some noteworthy cases from the first two months of...

SummaryThe Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has confirmed that owning a Community registered design (CRD) does not provide a defence to an infringement action relating to earlier CRDs.

The European Patent Office (EPO) has launched a new patent translation service which uses Google's Translate technology.Reported by partner Darren Smyth via his IPKat blog, the service initially...

Multiple rulings of the CJEU on the SPC Regulation fail to answer questions posed by the national courts, result in greater confusion and give rise to a need for yet more references.

The issues of colour and composition form the basis of the questions referred to the CJEU by the Court of Appeal in this case of Specsavers International Healthcare & ors v Asda Stores Ltd.

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that it can be acceptable to improve your position in litigation by obtaining a new trademark registration in the period between the start of infringing acts and...

Partner Darren Smyth has made his second and third posts since joining the IPKat as a guest blogger.What is obvious - the route or the destination? is about the approach taken by patent offices to...

Following yesterday's announcement that Darren Smyth has been appointed as the third guest blogger on the IPKat, he has now made his first post.

The EPO has just officially published (T 777/08 Atorvstatin Polymorphs OJEPO 12/2011 633-643) a decision of the Technical Boards of Appeal which surprisingly finds that, in general, a claim to a...

In a recent EIP newsflash we reported a recent development in the way the UK Intellectual Property Office handles subject matter excluded from patentability, based on a High Court judgement relating...

Can use by a competitor of a trademark as a keyword in an advertising service, such as Google’s AdWords service, be restricted by the proprietor of the trademark? Services such as AdWords allow...

The Patent Box reaches another milestone. On the 6 December the Government will publish the draft legislation based on the public consultation in the light of its original proposals.

In Human Genome Sciences Inc v Eli Lilly and Company [2011] UKSC 51, The UK Supreme Court overturned the High Court and Court of Appeal rulings and found that a patent met the requirement of...

The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) has ruled on the admissibility of disclaimers which disclaim subject-matter which is disclosed as an embodiment in the application as filed.