Patents

On 7 May 2020, we brought together a team of experts to discuss how to effectively manage patent portfolios at this time of crisis, remote working and increasing pressure on budgets.

The Unified Patent Court Agreement received a further blow this month after Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court declared the Act establishing the system null and void on constitutional grounds.

Earlier this year, the EPO published its decision setting out the reasons for its refusal of two European patent applications in which an AI system was designated as the inventor. 

The revised Rules of Procedure at the EPO’s Boards of Appeal (RPBA), known as ‘RPBA 2020’, came into force on 1 January 2020. The revised rules apply to any appeal pending on, or filed after, this date.

Announcement last week that the UK ‘will not be seeking involvement’ in the Unified Patent Court and Unitary Patent system is the latest blow for the much delayed EU patent, as Robert Balsters explains. 

France’s new PACTE law has set out to modernise utility certificates by increasing their term of protection and adding new provisions to allow applicants to transform utility certificate applications into patent applications.

Will the PACTE law, which seeks to tighten up the way in which patents are issued in France, result in stronger French patents or a gradual abandonment of its measures?

Find out how Novagraaf assisted the University of Bordeaux and University Medical Centre of Bordeaux’s IP management organisation, SATT Aquitaine Science Transfer, to protect a new breakthrough treatment. 

Holders of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) international applications will soon be able to apply for protection of their invention in Italy without going through the European Patent system.

EPO ruling on CRISPR gene-editing patent is only the latest example of priority arrangements made according to US practice causing problems for European Patent applications, as Dr Oliver Harris explains. 

Regulation (EU) 2019/933 on Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) entered into force on 1 July 2019. It amended Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 on SPCs by introducing a manufacturing waiver for generics and biosimilars within the EU.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that apply for patents, trademarks or designs are more likely to experience high growth than SMEs that do not, according to a joint study by the EPO and the EUIPO.