At the last count, there were more than seventy companies offering AI-assisted IP software solutions. Most of these companies are less than two years old.
Legal privilege ensures that you can share sensitive information with your lawyers without fear of it being used against you in court. This protection is critical in all fields of law. In patent law, without the assurance of secrecy, the ability of a patentee or a defendant to receive candid advice would be severely diminished.…
AI presents a huge dilemma for patent attorneys. There is no doubt that AI will have a dramatic impact on the profession and the business model that many firms have relied on for decades.
The Board of Appeal in T 873/24 has decided to refer questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) on the application of G1/24 (claim interpretation) to the assessment of added matter.
It took a global pandemic to move some patent firms away from paper files. Today, it seems that patent attorneys are finally entering modernity with the growing adoption in the industry of automation tools for patent drafting and prosecution case management. Interestingly, much of this is being sold and promoted as “AI”, despite much of…
The comments space for the last IPKat article on claim interpretation/description amendments appears to have maxed out. Sorry everyone, but maybe it’s for the best. However, fear not, we now have a new decision to restart the debate!
A primary objective of a pharmaceutical patent is to provide robust protection for the drug product itself. Defining a cell therapy product represents a challenge in this respect, given their inherent complexity, heterogeneity and instability.
The world of Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC) has yet another referral to the CJEU on Article 3(d). The German Federal Patent Court (BPatG) asks if the strict interpretation of Article 3(d) established by CJEU in Santen applies when the earlier marketing authorisation relates to a human medicine but the SPC is sought for a veterinary…
The patent in T 1555/23 is impressively broad. The claims covered a medical use invention comprising treating the side effects of CAR-T cell therapy using the now industry-standard class of cytokine inhibitor. The claim was not limited to any particular CAR-T cell therapy, target, type of cancer or specific inhibitor.
If you want to start an argument amongst European patent attorneys, just mention description amendments. As the comments on this and other blogs attest, adaptation of the description is a highly divisive issue and the debate can get decidedly heated (with our US colleagues looking on with bemusement).
At the EPO, it is perfectly possible for a therapeutic invention to survive without clinical data. The recent decision in T 1601/22 confirmed this sometimes surprisingly low bar for sufficiency in Europe for therapeutic invention.
G 1/23 establishes that products made available to the public are prior art in Europe, regardless of reproducibility. While this simplifies novelty, focusing strictly on disclosure dates, it complicates inventive step assessments. Notably, T 1719/21 questions whether these non-reproducible products can serve as the “closest prior art” in the EPO’s problem-solution approach.
