Posts in Europe

The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) on October 10 issued its (consolidated) decision G1/22 & G2/22, which promises to significantly reduce priority issues for applicants—U.S.applicants in particular. When the applicants for a European patent application differ from the applicants on the priority application, the EPO employs the well-established “joint applicants approach” to evaluate the priority claim’s validity. For the priority claim to be valid, and assuming there’s been no transfer of the priority right, all applicants of the priority application must also be among the applicants of the subsequent European patent application. The table below outlines various scenarios and indicates whether the priority claim is valid according to the joint applicants approach.

On  April 27, 2023, the European Commission published its proposal for how the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs) should be governed in the EU. The draft regulation states that the initiative aims to incentivize participation by European firms in the standard development process and the broad implementation of such standardized technologies, particularly in IoT industries. The developments are of interest to any business that develops, implements or markets connective technologies.

Recent cases in the European Patent Office (EPO), the UK, and United States illustrate substantive differences between these jurisdictions as they continue to develop their inventive step/nonobviousness frameworks. In particular, the EPO and UK have recently provided guidance on a concept known as “plausibility,” i.e., whether the scope of the patent must be justified by the patentee’s technical contribution to the art in solving an identified problem. “If it is not plausible that the invention solves any technical problem then the patentee has made no technical contribution and the invention does not involve an inventive step.” Sandoz Limited v. Bristol-Meyers Squibb Holdings [2023] EWCA Civ 472. That standard, however, is quite dissimilar from the United States’ statutory standard of whether “the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious…”

On June 12 and 13, 2023, the German giant textile company, Oerlikon Textile G.M.B.H. & CO. K.G. (Oerlikon), filed two applications with the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC’s) Milan Local Division to preserve evidence against two Indian companies accused of infringing the (Italian portion) of the European patent EP214848B1, which covers a “False twist texturing machine”. The defendants, Himson Engineering Private Limited (“Himson”), and Bhagat Group, were exhibiting two machines at a trade fair, bearing the trade names Machine 2 and Machine 2-TS, along with a machine bearing the trade name, Bhagat Textile Engineers.

A letter sent to the United Kingdom’s International Business and Trade Secretary today urged scrapping proposals that health groups say would undermine the generic medicines industry in India. The letter refers to a leaked document that indicates the UK will be asking India to agree to a number of patent provisions as the two countries negotiate a trade deal today.

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released a report last week that calls on the G7 countries to bring Japan’s “Data Free Flow with Trust” (DFFT) initiative to life. According to Japan’s Digital Agency, the goal of DFFT is to promote the free flow of data through transparency while ensuring security and IP rights. The ITIF wrote, “building an open, rules-based, rights-respecting, and innovative global digital economy will depend on a small group of ambitious countries working together—such as at the DFFT—in a flexible format to draw in relevant international organizations and other interested countries and stakeholders.”

The European Patent Office (EPO) today launched a dashboard on Unitary Patents, which will be updated daily and breaks down data on requests for Unitary Patents by technology field, country of origin, language of translation, proprietors’ profile and status of registration. According to an EPO press release, there have been 670 requests filed on average per week since the Unitary Patent went into effect on June 1, “demonstrating high interest in the new system.” 

On Wednesday, July 5, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) released a summary of the responses it has received to its request for views on whether the country’s system for standard essential patents (SEP) is functioning properly. The goal of the request for comments and the subsequent report is to determine whether the UK government needs to make policy changes in this area. The Office received comments on a variety of topics related to SEPs, including the balance of the system, competition, transparency, patent litigation, and more. While both SEP holders and implementers reported problems in the system, the UKIPO found that there was little consensus among stakeholders as to the efficiency of the system and whether government intervention was needed.

A UK judge in May determined in a non-public judgment that has been widely reported on that Apple should pay Optis a total of $56.43 million plus interest for a worldwide FRAND license to Optis’s portfolio of 4G standard essential patents (SEPs). In the most recent development in the overall case, Apple yesterday reportedly lost its appeal in one of the four technical trials pending between the parties, meaning it could still be liable for fees related to infringement in the range of $7 billion.  

The UK High Court today issued an Approved Judgment in Interdigital Technology Corporation & Ors v Lenovo Group Ltd [2023] EWHC 1578 (Pat). While Lenovo was declared the “overall winner,” InterDigital was awarded interest, increasing their previous award by $46.2 million. In March, the Hon. Mr Justice Mellor issued a judgment ordering Lenovo to pay InterDigital a lump sum of $138.7 million for a global FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) license covering sales of cellular devices from 2007 to December 31, 2023. It was the second full FRAND trial to be decided by the UK courts, following the landmark Unwired Planet case.

The impact of the long-awaited launch of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is hard to overstate. While litigators and patent portfolio managers are immediately feeling the impact in Europe, surprisingly, they should also expect an impact on information disclosure statement (IDS) strategy for U.S. patent applications. To understand the impact, this article provides a background on how the European Patent Office (EPO) and UPC consider earlier national rights, how patent applicants can address earlier national rights to prevent invalidation at the UPC, how earlier national rights identified in a European patent application can affect a U.S. application and should be addressed in an IDS, and how this information can be used for monetization and litigation.   

Earlier this week, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released a report that offers a rebuttal to nine claims it identifies with the “anti-IP progressive orthodoxy.” Prominent progressive senators, including Senators Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have turned up the heat on pharmaceutical companies’ drug pricing and IP policies. While members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have criticized big pharma, the ITIF report identifies other “anti-IP advocates” to rebut including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, Joe Stiglitz, Dean Baker, and Arjun Jayadev. The ITIF report promotes the narrative that intellectual property rights are foundational to the United States as a nation and economy. However, the ITIF argues that anti-IP advocates are trying to persuade the Biden administration to move away from this traditional position.

Today, the International Trademark Association (INTA) published an amicus brief filed with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in a case that should have major implications for the effects of Brexit on EU trademark law. INTA’s brief asks the CJEU to reverse a lower court’s decision and rule that the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) was correct in determining that UK trademark law can no longer provide a legal interest to sustain an opposition to an EU trademark application filed before Brexit.

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is now a reality. The Court opens its doors tomorrow, June 1, 2023. In the past four articles, we have aimed to dispel myths about some of the key aspects of the UPC. Part 1 focused on the designated UPC judges, Part 2 on the timelines, Part 3 on the remedies that are available at the UPC and finally Part 4 on the financial aspects of the UPC. These articles illustrated that the UPC will become a success story, since there are simply no good reasons not to engage with the Court. This final installment to the series will provide five predictions about how the UPC will operate. We’ll review in 12 months where our peek into the crystal ball got it right, and where it missed the mark.

The European Commission (EC) is at it again, threatening to regulate standard essential patent (SEP) licensing relationships, despite a lack of evidence that such regulation is appropriate. The economically harmful nature of this regulatory framework (and its prior draft) has been highlighted by many expert commentators, including contributors to IPWatchdog (see here, here, and here) and Truth on the Market (see here and here). Fortunately, the EC’s proposed regulatory framework is still open for public comments. Mindful of that opportunity, on May 23, Mercatus Center scholars Christine McDaniel, Satya Marar, and I filed a public interest submission with the European Commission, focusing on three sets of problems posed by the framework. I summarize our submission below.