Original news and analysis on international IP policy
For a variety of reasons, Thailand and Brazil have huge backlogs of pharmaceutical patent applications. The delay in patent examinations is creating pressure on the countries to extend patent protection terms to the detriment of access to affordable medicines, AIDS organisations say.
Ukrainian lawmakers are poised to approve sweeping patent reform legislation, driven in large part by a push by patients’ groups for better access to affordable medicines and healthcare.
LONDON -- Biosimilars, supplementary protection certificates and European Patent Office patent quality are among the priority issues for the generic drug manufacturing sector, speakers said Wednesday at a Medicines for Europe conference.
United States Patent and Trademark Office inter partes reviews are legal and do not violate Article III of the Constitution or the 7th Amendment, the US Supreme Court said today. While the decision was expected, practitioners before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board can now rest easy, as one patent lawyer put it.
The United States Supreme Court is likely to affirm the constitutionality of US Patent and Trademark Office inter partes reviews when it rules in the closely watched matter of Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group LLC, according to Michael Best & Friedrich intellectual property attorney Marshall Schmitt. The end result of the decision, however, is hard to predict, he said.
Google’s use of 37 of Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) packages in its Android operating system infringed Oracle patents and copyright, the US District Court for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) said on 27 March. The latest decision in the long-running case was not unreasonable but could stifle software innovation, lawyers said.
There is little evidence that more innovative or therapeutically valuable pharmaceutical products are rewarded, or that patents are the best way to do so, Economics Professor Margaret Kyle of the Centre d’économie industrielle of Mines ParisTech says in an upcoming study for the Review of Industrial Organization.
Native American tribes’ sovereign immunity can’t be used to avoid inter partes review (IPR) of patent validity, the US Patent and Trademark Office Patent and Appeal Board (PTAB) has ruled in a first-of-its-kind case.
The German Federal Constitutional Court has agreed to take up a challenge that could potentially derail the Unified Patent Court (UPC). The special - and opaque - procedure under the national constitution allows a single individual to claim constitutional breaches, said Hogan Lovells (Dusseldorf) patent litigator Clemens Plassmann. The lawsuit leaves the UPC in disarray at least until next year, he said.
Meanwhile, in the never-ending feud between European Patent Office (EPO) management and staff, President Benoȋt Battistelli was forced to back off from a planned rule change that would allow him to fire staff members “if the exigencies of the service require abolition of their post or a reduction in staff.”
By a vote of 94-0, the United States Senate on 5 February confirmed California intellectual property litigator Andrei Iancu as next director of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The new Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property is currently managing partner of Irell & Manella LLP’s Los Angeles firm. The patent and trademark communities wished Iancu luck but said there are many issues at the agency that need his attention.
Intellectual property issues are becoming increasingly important to venture capital investment decisions, speakers said at a recent American Bar Association webinar.
Plans to update European Union copyright rules advanced in 2017 but remain contentious heading into the new year. The proposal for a directive on copyright in the digital single market is the subject of intense debate between the EU Presidency and the European Parliament, with no clear end in sight to the negotiations. Several issues, including a possible “ancillary right” for news publishers and a plan to force online platforms to filter all uploads to combat copyright infringement, remain unresolved.
Other copyright matters, such as a regulation on broadcasting and a review of the EU database directive, are in the works. On the patent side, a pressing question is whether – and when – the EU unified patent and patent court (UPC) might finally launch.
Several EU comprehensive trade agreements, which include provisions on intellectual property rights, are under negotiation.
Cases to watch in the European Court of Justice include a referral from the Netherlands on the issue of whether the taste of cheese can be copyrighted.