High Court: Patents Court judgments, 2016

An interim injunction may be varied only where there has been a material change of circumstances. The court must then reconsider the balance of the risk of…

Permission to use documents disclosed under the collateral purpose rule depends on special circumstances providing a cogent reason for collateral use.…

On an application under the Patents Act 1977 to transfer an entitlement dispute from the Comptroller to the High Court, the question is whether the dispute…

A patent claim to a very broad class of chemical compounds is not inventive merely because it is limited to compounds that possess the desired activity. The…

An approved costs budget is not an absolute cap, but it provides a prima facie limit on recoverable costs. The court may depart from it only where there is…

For patent construction, general words in a claim are not confined to the particular embodiment unless the claim language requires that result. “Proximal” and…

In patent litigation, the successful party ordinarily recovers its general costs. Costs attributable to discrete issues on which it lost may be disallowed.…

A product and process description in patent proceedings addresses the nature and characteristics of the product or process, and whether it falls within the…

A keepalive packet is construed by reference to its technical purpose: maintaining a network address and port mapping through a network address translator. It…

Patent claims must be construed purposively from the claims, description and drawings, without importing limitations based only on particular embodiments or…

Under Californian law, contractual interpretation seeks the parties’ mutual intention objectively manifested in the contract and admissible extrinsic evidence.…

The court may grant an Arrow declaration where it is useful to determine pre-emptively whether a product would have a Gillette defence to a later patent…

Patent claims must be construed purposively in the context of the specification, but deliberate claim limitations cannot be ignored. The scope of a claim does…

In pharmaceutical patent cases, a dosage regime may be patentable subject matter, but its validity depends on whether the particular regime involves an…

For an application for a supplementary protection certificate, a valid marketing authorisation must have been granted in the relevant Member State at the…

A threat of patent infringement proceedings made before grant is capable of justification after grant. Section 70(2A) focuses on whether the acts identified in…

Exclusive jurisdiction over patent validity cannot be avoided by pleading infringement separately from validity. Where validity of a foreign designation is…

Where a proposed competition defence in patent litigation depends materially on the outcome and scope of the technical patent trial, the court may adjourn…

Patent claims expressed by reference to numerical composition ranges generally mean the values stated, interpreted in light of the common general knowledge and…

A patent claim is entitled to priority only where the skilled person can derive its subject matter directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge…

A product and process description in patent proceedings must contain sufficient information to resolve infringement issues on both sides’ reasonably arguable…

There is no blanket rule requiring standard disclosure, or disclosure on obviousness, in patent proceedings. Under Civil Procedure Rules r31.5(7), the court…

The court’s power to transfer proceedings to the Competition Appeal Tribunal is confined to proceedings relating to an infringement issue. It does not extend…

Whether to order a preliminary issue is a case-management decision. The court should consider whether the issue may dispose of the whole case or a substantial…

In technically complex patent litigation, a court may obtain assistance from a neutral scientific adviser to improve its understanding of the underlying…

In assessing obviousness, the court must consider the differences between the prior art and the claimed invention without knowledge of the invention and…

For patent infringement, “conversion” between measurement systems may require both a compatible reporting format and direct comparability on a common scale.…

When deciding whether to order a preliminary issue, the court must consider both the appropriateness of doing so in principle and the directions, timing and…

A Patents Court may grant an Arrow -type declaration that a claimant’s own product was obvious or anticipated at the priority date of pending divisional…

When deciding whether to stay national patent proceedings pending opposition or appeal proceedings before the European Patent Office, the Patents Court must…

Indirect infringement requires proof that, at the time of supply, the supplier knows or it is obvious that at least some ultimate users will intend to use the…

In patent sufficiency, the specification must enable the skilled person to perform the invention across the whole scope claimed, without undue burden or…

Obviousness is assessed by asking whether the claimed invention would have been obvious to the objectively defined skilled person or team, having regard to the…

The Patents Court may actively manage patent proceedings to achieve a trial within, or shortly after, twelve months of issue where practicable. Parties are…

An injunction for breach of a settlement agreement is discretionary and preventive. Where the agreement regulates conduct akin to patent infringement, the…

A long-term coexistence agreement must be construed as a whole and according to its governing law. Under German law, the agreement covered use of the word…

In patent litigation, computer modelling and simulations used as experimental proof should generally be managed under the Notices of Experiments procedure. The…

For obviousness, the skilled person may be a team comprising people from different disciplines where such a team existed in reality and was relevant to the…