Archive - November 2017

Supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) (as provided under EU Regulation (EC) No. 469/2009) are intended to compensate patent proprietors for any potential loss of exclusivity due to the long regulatory approval procedures required to get new drugs onto the market. To this end SPCs can provide up to five years of patent term extension in relation […]

On 1 November 2017, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling against The London Taxi Corporation Ltd (“LTC”) in favour of defendants Frazer-Nash Research Limited (“FRN”) and Ecotive Limited (“Ecotive”). LTC had argued that their UK and EU registered trade marks, which depict models of its taxis, were being infringed by FRN and Ecotive’s model […]

In July 2017 the Supreme Court judgment in the Actavis v Eli Lilly case (“Actavis”) changed the way we will assess the scope of patent claims in the UK (see here for an overview).  The Actavis judgment did not touch on whether the change to the way that scope of claims is determined for the […]

The Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Act 2017 came into force on 1 October 2017. The new law comes as the result of a consultation process triggered by the Law Commission in April 2013. UK law provides for protection against groundless threats of infringement proceedings by the holder of a patent, trade mark, unregistered design right […]