High Court: Patents Court judgments, 2010

Third-party access to documents on a court file is governed by the applicable rules and practice directions. There is no general right to inspect the file. An…

Summary judgment may be appropriate in a patent case where the court has the necessary evidence to construe the patent and no further factual investigation is…

On an application for an interim injunction, the claimant must show a serious question to be tried, or a realistic prospect of succeeding in obtaining a…

In construing patent claims, the court must determine what the skilled person would understand the language to mean in the context of the specification. A…

Under CPR 19.2(2)(a), a person may be joined where doing so is desirable to enable the court to resolve all matters in dispute. The rule does not require an…

Specific disclosure may be ordered where documents have a sufficiently arguable relevance to a live factual issue. Relevance may arise because the documents…

An interim payment on account of damages should be limited to the sum which the claimant can safely be assumed to recover in any event. The court must adopt a…

In registered-design infringement, the relevant comparison is the overall impression produced on the informed user, assessed against the design corpus and the…

The slip rule is confined to accidental slips or omissions in a judgment or order. It does not permit a party to withdraw from terms deliberately agreed by…

On discontinuance, the normal rule is that the discontinuing claimant pays the defendant’s costs, but the court may depart from that order where a good reason…

For supplementary protection certificate purposes, a product is identified by what it is, namely its active ingredient or combination of active ingredients…

For added matter, the court compares the disclosure of the application as filed with that of the amended patent and asks whether subject matter relevant to the…

Specific disclosure in patent proceedings requires documents to be materially relevant to an issue for decision. Claim construction remains a matter for the…

A patentable invention is property capable of assignment before it is made. An enforceable pre-invention agreement may therefore make the assignee the…

On an appeal from a specialist patent tribunal, the appellate court should review rather than rehear the decision unless the interests of justice require…

For the purposes of Article 3(d) of the Council Regulation 1768/92/EEC, the relevant authorisation is the first authorisation to place the active ingredient on…

A patent claim must be construed purposively through the eyes of the skilled person. Preparatory steps may form part of a claimed method where excluding them…

Restoration of a lapsed patent for non-payment of renewal fees requires proof that the proprietor took reasonable care to secure payment by the statutory…

In determining whether replacing a component of a patented combination amounts to making a new product, the court must ask whether the part left behind…

A patent claim must be construed according to what the skilled reader would understand its language to mean in the context of the specification. A coined virus…

A patent claim must be construed according to what the skilled person would understand the specification to disclose, read with the common general knowledge. A…

For an SPC, “product” has the same meaning in Articles 1(b) and 3(a) of the SPC Regulation. For a medicinal product containing several active ingredients, only…

A patent claim is construed objectively through the eyes of the skilled addressee. The description and drawings may interpret the claims, but cannot be used to…