The Düsseldorf location has been one of the most active courts in national German patent litigations and widely used by international patentees. It has now issued the first known ex-parte injunction in the Unified Patent Court (UPC). The patent in dispute relates to EP2546134 which is a “Combination structure of...
Artificial Intelligence, Inventive Step and Disclosure
A further decision from the European Patent Office’s Boards of Appeal illustrates the challenges faced by patent applicants when filing for patents for artificial intelligence (AI) inventions but also provides a number of suggestions on the level of detail that the patent office requires when disclosing the invention. The decision...
Standard Essential Patents at the European UPC
The Chinese company Huawei has apparently become the first company to file a patent infringement suit based on a standard essential patent in the new European Unitary Patent Court (UPC), according to a report in the IAM magazine. So-called "Standard Essential Patents" (abbreviated to SEPs) are patents protecting a technology required...
File Wrapper Estoppel in the Unified Patent Court
File-wrapper estoppel (also call "prosecution history estoppel") is a term used to indicate that an applicant of a patent application that has made "narrowing amendments" to the claims of the patent application, for example to take into account prior art, may be precluded from broadening the scope of their granted claims to...
Euro Parliament agrees text of AI Act
The European Parliament approved on Wednesday, 14th June, a revised version of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). The text will now pass to the so-called "trilogue", at which will be discussed with the European Commission and the Member States. The AI Act appears to be on a path to adoption in...
Unified Patent Court – Central Divisions
One of the open issues relating to the Unified Patent Court (UPC) was the question of the location of the Central Division that was originally scheduled to be located in London. The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union meant that a new location needed to be selected....
Critical Raw Materials and Quantum Technology
Critical raw materials are materials that are essential for the production of high-tech products, but are in limited supply and have in the past few years faced potential supply chain disruptions. These materials are called "critical" because they are used in many modern technologies, including quantum computing, semiconductor electronics, as...
Neural Networks and Technical Problems
According to the European Patent Office's Board of Appeal Decision T 0702/20, a neural network defines a class of mathematical functions and, as such, cannot be protected by a European Patent. However, the neural network can be considered when assessing the inventive stop used to solve a technical problem and...
Record Patent Grants in Germany
The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) reports granted 23,592 patents last year - 11.7% higher than the previous year, and the greatest number for over 30 years. The number of incoming applications at 57,214 was down by 2.3% compared to last year. Foreign (non-German) applications filed 20,020 applications,...
European Unified Patent – which countries does it include?
The start of the new Unified Patent in Europe has now been confirmed for 1 June 2023. It will be possible after this date to request that any European patents granted after this date can be validated as a so-called Unitary Patent covering a number of European countries. The Unitary...