Jurisdiction Reports

Business brief 2017: South Africa

Business brief 2017: Japan

Business brief 2017: Barbados

Medical use claims

Section 14(4) of the Patents Act explicitly provides for protection of a new use of a known substance or composition if it was not previously disclosed for use in surgery, therapy or diagnosis (ie, first medical use). Protection of substances or compositions claimed under this format is restricted to the substance or composition when presented or packaged for use.

The force of moral rights

The strength of moral rights in Dutch copyright law has in January 2017 been illustrated in two legal disputes concerning the renovation of architectural buildings.

Interpreting the concept of equivalence

Rulings of the Italian Supreme Court on patentability of intermediate products and infringement by equivalence in the chemical field are infrequent. These two topics were brought under the spotlight in a decision by the court on December 2, 2016 in Industriale Chimica v Bayer Pharma.

iPhone 6 cleared of design patent infringement

On March 24, 2017, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court ruled on a case in which Apple Computer Trading (Shanghai), a subsidiary of Apple, and Beijing Zoomflight Telecommunications Equipment had sued the Beijing Intellectual Property Office and Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services as a third party. The court’s decision revoked an administrative ruling by the office and affirmed that Apple Shanghai and Zoomflight did not infringe Baili’s design patent at issue.

Patent exculpatory opinions post-Halo

When a company receives a letter accusing it of patent infringement, or has been named as a defendant in a patent infringement lawsuit, the reactions of its management can be quite varied. Some will express emotional reactions such as “that patent is invalid and should never have been granted” or “there is no way that we infringe”. While there may ultimately be truth in such beliefs, they provide little value overall.

New rules for word marks

The Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) has adopted a new rule of requesting the applicant of a word mark to detail on the application form the letters either all in upper case or all in lower case, or the first letter in upper case and the rest in lower case (as in a typical sentence).

The highs and lows of compensation

The ‘loser pays’ principle has resulted in a variety of compensation awards in patent disputes, from several hundred euros to hundreds of thousands of euros. To create a semblance of predictability on the amounts, guidelines on indicative rates were introduced.