High Court: Patents Court judgments, 2006

In an action seeking a declaration of non-infringement, disclosure must be directed to an identified issue arising from the written product or process…

A national court may withdraw referred questions where a subsequent ruling of the Court of Justice has determined them. A reference should be maintained where…

In construing a Swiss-form medical-use claim, the court must read the language in the context of the specification as a whole. A claim to using a neurotoxic…

Permission to serve proceedings out of the jurisdiction requires a serious issue to be tried, or a reasonable prospect of success, together with satisfaction…

Community exhaustion depends on the proprietor’s consent to marketing within the EEA. Consent may be express or implied, but implication requires facts and…

A claimed microemulsion pre-concentrate must produce a dispersion possessing the defining characteristics of a microemulsion. The presence of some particles…

On an interim patent injunction, the court must first identify a serious question to be tried, without conducting a mini-trial on conflicting affidavit…

There is a presumption in favour of staying parallel national patent proceedings pending opposition proceedings before the EPO, because a stay may avoid…

Whether patent proceedings should be stayed pending opposition proceedings in the European Patent Office is determined by asking whether a stay is in the…

For Trade Marks Act 1994, section 3(1)(c), a mark formed from descriptive elements must be assessed as a whole. It is permissible, but not essential, to…

For novelty, the relationship between a claimed component and the operating member must be assessed as the claim requires. It is insufficient to compare each…

Patent claims are construed purposively, in the context of the specification, but construction cannot extend the monopoly beyond the language of the claims.…

Damages for patent infringement are compensatory. The claimant must prove loss that was foreseeable, caused by the infringement and not too remote. The…

In purposively construing a patent claim, the court must determine what the skilled person would understand the chosen words to mean in the specification’s…

A patent claim must be construed according to its language, read purposively and in the context of the specification. Where the claim’s wording has a clear…

For the purpose of the exclusion for business methods, a patent may pass the initial threshold for being an invention where it uses technical means. The…

In a declaration of non-infringement concerning a manufacturing process, the court may require the product and process description to address material features…

The grant of a negative declaration is a matter of discretion, rather than jurisdiction. Such relief requires a sufficiently defined and justiciable issue. It…

A patent claim is obvious where routine formulation work would lead the skilled person to use a claimed substance for its conventional purpose, even if the…

On an appeal from the Comptroller’s exercise of a discretion, the court will interfere only where the tribunal below considered irrelevant matters, omitted…

For the purposes of the exclusions in Patents Act 1977, the substance of a claimed computerised process must be identified. A process which automates the…

Where confidential documents may materially affect an application to strike out or for summary judgment, the court may order their disclosure even though…

Under section 39(1)(a) of the Patents Act 1977, an employee’s invention belongs to the employer where it was made in the course of normal duties or…

In assessing obviousness, the court must identify the contribution actually disclosed by the specification and the result which the skilled person would be…

Patent claims are assessed by their full breadth. The inventive concept cannot be narrowed by selecting only embodiments showing particular technical…

For anticipation by inevitable result, it is insufficient that a prior disclosure merely enables the skilled person to perform a process within the claim.…

Patent claims must be construed in context and by reference to the disclosure, with ambiguous language given the meaning supported by the specification and the…