AWA Point
BRCA patents in Europe
By Niklas Mattsson | Posted on April 1, 2010
An ongoing lawsuit in the US has attracted a lot of attention worldwide. The American Civil Liberties Union has, together with other parties, sued the US Patent and Trademark Office, Myriad Genetics and others. On Monday 29 March 2010, a judge in a federal District Court in New York ruled that the “Myriad patents” in...
New dosage regimen may be patented, but no more Swiss-type claims
By Mikael Henriksson | Posted on February 23, 2010
The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO clarifies, in decision G 2/08 of 19 February 2010, that it is possible to obtain a patent for a medicament known to treat a specific illness for use in a different method for treatment of the same illness. However, such inventions may not be claimed in the...
Tags: Enlarged Board of Appeal. Swiss-type claims, European patent application
The language of proceedings used before the EPO can never be changed
By AWA | Posted on February 18, 2010
The language of proceedings used before the EPO can never be changed – this includes the language used before the international receiving office if that language is English, French or German The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) has for the second time this week issued a decision. This latest decision, G...
New EPO practice on the patentability of surgical methods
By Mikael Henriksson | Posted on February 17, 2010
The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office has in its latest decision G 1/07 of 15 February 2010 provided guidelines on the exception to patentability on methods for treatment of the body by surgery. The purpose of this exclusion is to free the medical profession from constraints by patents. The context of...
Tags: Enlarged Board of Appeal, European patent, patentability
How to protect your IP rights in Hong Kong
By Vibeke Warberg Rohde | Posted on February 2, 2010
Many people are aware of the important role that Hong Kong plays for trade in Asia, not least as a gateway to the Chinese market, yet few know much about how to go about protecting their intellectual property rights there. Since 1997 Hong Kong has had its own patent law under which a British or...
Tags: Asia, Chinese, English, Hong Kong, IP rights
Patent Prosecution Highway III – Geographical overview
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on January 18, 2010
The concept of PPH was originally proposed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) as a bilateral agreement between the patent offices of two countries on using each other’s search and examination results in treating analogous patent applications, thereby allowing applicants in both offices to obtain analogous patents faster and more efficiently. The first PPH was...
What is the Patent Prosecution Highway?
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on December 21, 2009
The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a concept originally proposed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO). PPH has the purpose of increasing the speed and improving the quality of the prosecution of patent applications. This is achieved in that the patent offices of two countries make an agreement to use each other’s search and examination...
Trade Mark User Requirements Tightened Following US Supreme Court Ruling
By AWA | Posted on December 3, 2009
Following a key US Supreme Court ruling earlier this year we announced that the practice in regard to the fulfilment of the user requirements for trade marks has been tightened in the USA. Consequently, an entire trade mark registration can be cancelled if the owner can only prove use of trade mark for a part...
Software related inventions at the Enlarged Board of Appeals
By AWA | Posted on October 14, 2009
It is now almost a year since the President of the EPO referred four questions relating to the patentability of software related inventions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (G03/08). The hope is of course that the EBA finally may put several issues to rest, issues that have been debated in and out of the...
Tags: inventions, patentability, Software, software patenting
Is the era of cascading divisionals coming to an end?
By AWA | Posted on October 6, 2009
Filing a divisional used to be a common procedure before oral proceedings as well as before grant of a patent. But for European applications this possibility has now been drastically restricted, and new rules concerning divisionals (rule 36 EPC) will be in place from April 1, 2010. Until recently there were considerable uncertainties regarding the application...
Recent contributors
Partner, Attorney at Law, Business Area Manager
Partner, European Patent Attorney
Senior Counsel, European Patent Attorney
Counsel, AU and NZ Patent Attorney
Senior Associate, China Patent Attorney
Senior Associate, Attorney at Law