CIPA Guide to the Patents Acts 9th ed: 3rd Supplement

The CIPA Guide to the Patents Acts brings together the expertise of over 30 highly respected professionals including patent attorneys, solicitors and members of the Bar, all individually selected for their expert knowledge.

Decisions of fundamental significance have been issued since publication of the 9th Edition and are covered in the Third Supplement, including:

• the CJEU judgment in Royalty Pharma concerning SPC protection for products falling under a functional definition in a patent claim but developed only after the filing date of the patent;
• the pending EPO Enlarged Appeal Board referral G 2/21 plausibility concerning the value of evidence supporting inventive step but not publicly available before the filing date;
• whether it is permissible to name an AI machine (DABUS) as an inventor;
• Court of Appeal decisions on claim construction: Therani v Hamilton, Lufthansa v Astronics and Commscope Technologie v SOLiD;
• two related EPO decisions in Proof of the publication date/QUALCOMM concern the reliability of an alleged internet publication date.
• Court of Appeal decisions in Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd v Geofabrics Ltd, Alcon v Actavis and Illumina v Latvia relating to novelty and inventive step; Saint-Gobain Adfors v 3M relating to sufficiency; Fiberweb Geosynthetics v Geofabrics and Optis v Apple relating to post-trial injunctions and Neurim v Generics relating to post-trial costs.