News
No more patents for cells derived from human embryos in EU
The Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) has issued a key decision limiting the scope of protection available for inventions that claim human ES cells and their derivatives. These restrictions apply to the whole EU and go further than previous measures adopted by the European Patent Office in this area. More...
EU patent system update: two steps forward, one step back.
On 13 April 2011, the European Commission used the veto-busting ‘enhanced cooperation procedure’ to adopt two new legislative proposals, being the latest steps towards a unitary EU-wide patent system. The first proposal outlines procedures for obtaining a single patent that provides protection across all EU Member States that support the proposal. The second proposal contains rules governing the languages into which such a patent must be translated. These proposals will now be transmitted to the European Council and the European Parliament for further consideration and voting.
The crucial point of how unitary EU patents will be enforced remains unresolved, however, following a negative decision by the European Court of Justice on 8 March, which declared the proposed creation of a single patent litigation system across Europe to be incompatible with existing EU law. The European Commission will continue to tackle this contentious issue and is expected to make a new legislative proposal in this regard soon.
Informal Invitation to Clarify or Final Chance?
In a notice dated 1 March 2011, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that it is now applying an informal clarification procedure when acting as International Searching Authority (ISA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
Under this new procedure the EPO may, in its capacity as ISA, seek informal clarification from the applicant to enhance the quality of an international search. The EPO may seek such clarification where the description, the claims or the drawings of a PCT application fail to comply with the prescribed requirements, such as clarity or support of the claims by the description, to such an extent that no meaningful search for all or part of the claims can be carried out. This may occur, for example, where certain claims of the application fail to include enough technical features.