News

The UK High Court has recently granted an interim injunction in a battle between two battery separator manufacturers, Celgard and Shenzhen Senior Technology Material Company (“Senior”), over accusations of the unlawful acquisition of trade secrets. The judgement can be found here. Celgard (a US manufacturer of battery separators) brought proceedings against Senior (a Chinese manufacturer […]

The UK Court of Appeal has recently upheld a judgement of the UK High Court (see here), refusing an application for a preliminary injunction (see here). The case concerns two anti-insomnia drugs, Circadin and Slenyto, marketed by the claimants Neurim Pharmaceuticals and their licensee Flynn Pharma, respectively. The claimants sought interim injunctive relief to restrain […]

CJEU reverses Neurim and rejects possibility of SPCs for new therapeutic applications of previously authorised products On 9 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down its decision in Santen SAS v Directeur général de l’Institut national de la propriété industrielle (C-673/18), concluding that it is not possible to obtain […]

The UK Supreme Court has overturned a decision from the Court of Appeal to find two of Regeneron’s transgenic mouse patents invalid for sufficiency. The effect of this judgement is that the bar on sufficiency has been returned to requiring that the disclosure of a patent supports substantially every embodiment of the claims. For the […]

The major IP offices that we deal with have reacted to the COVID-19 outbreak in various ways as follows: European Patent Office: The EPO has published a dedicated webpage tracking their response to COVID-19 disruption. Their earlier blanket extension provision has been lifted, and from 2 June 2020, extensions to deadlines, and forgiveness for missed […]

This Enlarged Board is for turning – Plants and animals produced by essentially biological processes are now NOT patentable The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office has issued its decision in G3/19 (Pepper), concluding that plants and animals exclusively obtained by essentially biological processes are not patentable (see the opinion here). G3/19 […]