IP Trends’ Most Popular Posts

These are our all-time most popular posts:

1. 10 Observations on Patent Litigation in Europe

Where does litigation happen? Where are the most appeals and how many succeed? Lots of facts and figures.

2. 10 Tips For Success In European Patent Office (EPO) Appeals on Biotech Cases

When to amend. How to formulate strategy. What to expect.

3. 10 Biotech Claims You Cannot Have In Europe

What types of biotech subject matter are not patentable in Europe?

4. 10 Points on the EPO Boards of Appeal

What are the differences between Boards? What is causing backlogs?

5. 10 Observations on the Success and Failings of University Tech Transfer

Why are so few tech transfer offices breaking even? And what can be done about it?

6. 10 Observations on Clients by a European Biotech Patent Attorney

What types of clients are there? And how do we better serve their interests?

7. 10 Points from Patent Developments and Case Law in the US in 2013

Bowman v Monsanto, Myriad, Wyeth v Abbot, Therasense all seem such a long time ago.

8. 10 Points on the European Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court

The basics of two revolutionary changes in Europe.

9. 10 Points from UK Court Decisions from 2013

Virgin v Zodiac, IPCom v HTC, Nestec v Dualit, Generics v Yoda

10. 10 Points from IPO Patent Decisions in 2013

The UK Intellectual Property Office continued its hard line against business methods and computer software, whilst requiring help from the CJEU on parthenotes.

Patent Bits and Pieces: the Future of the Federal Circuit, When Can You Amend in UK Litigation, Non-Patent Incentives, Patent Pools and Personalised Medicine

Here’s a collection of interesting items we recently came across:

1. ‘Coming of Age for the Federal Circuit’ is a paper by Professor Feldman about what the Supreme Court is trying to tell the Federal Circuit through recent decisions.

2. A recent UK High Court decision, Compactgtl v Velocys & Ors, sets out when amendments are allowable during litigation. See the decision here. See the IPKat post about it here.

3. ‘Patentable Subject Matter and Non-Patent Innovation Incentives’ is a paper by Lisa Ouellette asking Courts to think about non-patent incentives to assist in defining what is patentable.

4. ‘Patent Law’s Problem Children: Software and Biotechnology in Trans-Atlantic Context’ is a paper by Dan Burk examining the issues around patenting software and biotechnology.

5. ‘Power and Governance in Patent Pools’ by Michael Mattioli studies 52 patent pools to see how they operate and proposes initiatives which could help patent pools promote innovation.

6. ‘Reviving the Paper Patent Doctrine’ by John Duffy explores whether Courts should discriminate against enforcement of patents which are not practiced.

7. ‘Incentives, Intellectual Property, and Black-Box Personalised Medicine’ by Nicholson Price II looks at the patenting of personalised medicine inventions based on algorithms in view of the Mayo, Myriad and Alice decisions.

8. ‘Personalised Medicine and Patent Eligibility’ by Steven Amundson looks at the effect of the Akamai, Mayo and Classen decisions on patenting personalised medicines.

Evergreening in the Pharma Sector

A recent IPKat post (see here) about adoption of a resolution (see here) about second medical use claims at AIPPI has led to some interesting Anonymous comments which discuss the controversy over evergreening.

 This caught our attention because of two interesting points cited by the comments:

- The UK decision Les Laboratoires Servier and Servier Laboratories Limited v Apotex Inc, Apotex Pharmachem Inc Apotex Europe Limited and Apotex UK Limited [2008] EWCA Civ 445 (see here for the decision, see here for the IPKat post). In the decision Robin Jacob made some very harsh comments against evergreening.

- Robin Jacob’s comments on evergreening in the pharma sector (see here) which were part of the EU enquiry into the sector.

This is clearly a controversial area, but the role that second medical use claims can play in effectively extending protection beyond the initial term has to be acknowledged.

You may also wish to see related articles 10 Points About the State of the Pharma/Biotech Sector and 10 Observations on Different Types of Research.

How Patents Contribute to Academia, Economics and Society

Patents are important, complex and bring up controversial issues that affect many people. This post briefly examines some of the issues around patents that would be of interest to people in other sectors.

1. Language and claim construction

Much has been written about how to interpret claims, and claim construction is often pivotal to the outcome of litigation particularly in the US. Indefiniteness was the subject of a recent US Supreme Court decision Nautilus (see here). Clearly there is an inherent uncertainty in language which will always be there. In addition in certain territories the claims are also the basis of a doctrine of equivalents or ‘purposive’ construction.

Claim construction can therefore help us to formulate theories of how to approach text (see here).

For further academic articles about claim construction see here, here, and here.

2. Morality of Biotech Inventions

In Europe the Biotech Directive (see here) has given guidance on biotech inventions which are considered unpatentable for morality reasons. Subsequently the Brustle decision tackled the patentability of embryo stem cells (see here). Whether or not one agrees with these it is a platform to discuss and formulate a ‘European’ view of morality. That can then feed into discussions such as these.

3. Post-Structuralism

Patents are complicated and take place in the context of human systems. That means we must be aware of the limits in understanding them to the extent imposed by ‘post-structuralism’, i.e. there may not be an underlying ‘structure’ or ‘right answer’ in a situation. That means for any given situation it may not be possible to achieve complete certainty to ‘is this claim scope patentable?’ or ‘how much is this patent worth?’.

4. Patents and Economics

How do patents affect innovation? Generally of course patents are judged to be good incentives for promoting innovation (see here). However the situation is complex and there is evidence that patents inhibit the subsequent development of an invention by other parties (see here). Clearly the answers to these questions will also vary from country to country (see here).

5. International Relations

Each nation has agreed to respect other nation’s patent rights. However there have been accusations that this can lead to a sort of neo-colonialism (see here). Clearly this is a complex issue, but the power of IP monopolies means they can conflict with national interests. However harmonisation of IP laws has also demonstrated the power of countries to work together and to develop joint institutions such as the European Patent Office.

6. Ways of Doing Research: Open Innovation

The traditional way of doing research and then patenting is being challenged by the rise of open innovation and collaborative models of research. This leads to the question of how the patent system should respond (e.g. for defensive patent licencing see here), and whether in fact it is time to get rid of it altogether (see here).

Patent Problems and Controversies

Patents are a powerful monopoly with International reach. That means they can be very helpful in promoting innovation, but they can also cause problems and controversy. We list below topical problems relating to patents. This post does not aim to discuss each topic in detail, instead giving links to further information for those who are interested.

1. Access to medicines

Patents in the developing world cause drugs to be unaffordable for the poorest. It’s an issue still in need of resolving. See our IPKat post about it here.

2. TRIPS issues

The TRIPS agreement is not assisting technology transfer to the developing world as it was meant to, and arguably is hindering development in certain countries. We briefly discuss articles that suggest changing TRIPS here.

3. Patent trolls

This is a well-known problem in the US hi-tech sector with daily developments (see for example here). The US is responding with many legislative initiatives and the recent US Supreme Court ruling Alice v CLS Bank will also help (see our post on this decision here).

4. Is the present patent system appropriate for the developing world?

In many developing countries far more patent applications are filed by foreign companies than domestic companies. In this situation perhaps we need to rethink IP rights so that national interests are better served. See a Guardian article on this issue here.

5. Bioprospecting

Who owns natural resources and should patents be allowed to hinder their exploitation?  A recent article in the Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property illustrates these issues very well in the context of marine genetic resources (see here).

6. Specialist IP courts

Can specialist IP courts develop biases towards patentees? This accusation is sometimes directed at the US Federal Circuit (see here). See our post on specialist courts here.

7. Patenting nature or ‘building blocks’

The US Supreme Court decisions Mayo, Myriad and Alice are based on the principle that nature, natural law and abstract ideas cannot be patented. Essentially the ‘building blocks’ of innovation must be free for all to use. Decades of US case law no longer applies and patents will be more difficult to obtain in the biotech, pharma, chemical and software fields. See our post on the post-Alice post-Myriad post-Mayo world here.

8. Unfair trade agreements

What norms are needed to ensure that trade agreements that refer to IP are fair? This is a difficult issue when negotiations happen between parties of different powers, but clearly relevant to TRIPS and the present discussion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The Max Planck Institute is trying to formulate appropriate norms. See our post on their Declaration on Patent Protection here. See our post on the TPP here.

9. Evergreening

Evergreening is the use of patent protection on subsequent developments to extend protection for pharmaceutical products. Certain territories, like India, have legislation to specifically prevent this. See a paper on evergreening here.

10. Dominant patents inhibiting subsequent developments

There can be a ‘pioneer’ effect where the first party to obtain patent protection in a new field obtains broad claims which then hinder development in that field. See articles on that here and here, and our discussion of it on the PatLit blog here.

Top Tech Blogs

Tech blogs have huge numbers of visitors and are therefore an important way of disseminating news about the latest developments in technology. We’ve listed the most popular and our favourites below.

1. Mashable - 24 million visitors a month.

2. Gizmodo – 23.5 million visitors a month.

3. TechCrunch – 15 million visitors a month. We like this site. Whilst many articles are on very specific developments or new phone releases, there are also articles which are analyse the overall trends to understand what is happening in the tech space.

4. Engadget – 14 million visitors a month.

5. Wired – 13 million visitors a month. We like the mix of articles the Wired provides, with the odd political, social or historical story thrown into the tech topics.

6. TechRepublic – 4.5 million visitors a month.

7. VentureBeat – We like this site for articles that provide analysis of the tech space.

8. Fast Company – Not really a tech blog, but nicely written articles on new developments in lots of different areas.

9. Techdirt – a political blog with a lot interesting reactions and opinions to everything that is happening.

You may also wish to see related posts on Patent Blogs and 10 Points on Using Online Patent Databases.

A Collection of IP Reports: Patent Box, Second Medical Use Claims and Patent Attorney Negligence

We come across many IP reports, articles and decisions which are of interest in trying to keep up to date, but which we can’t devote entire posts to. Here’s a bundle of them:

1. An OECD/G20 report ‘Countering Harmful Tax Practices More Effectively, Taking into Account Transparency and Substance’ which comments on Patent Box and generally approves of the way the UK is doing it. See the report here. See IP Finance discussing it here.

2. AIPPI’s Working Committee Q238 report on ‘Second Medical Use Claims and Other Medical Indication Claims’ which provides a background on claim formats to protection medical inventions and the approach which different territories take to enforcement. See the report here. See IPKat’s discussion of it here.

3. Baillie v Spencer [2014] EWHC 2149 (Ch), a UK High Court case where a patent attorney was accused of professional negligence. The patent attorney was ultimately found to not be negligent, but there were clearly instances where he was too optimistic about the protection that could be gained and he offered advice on commercial matters that he should not have done. See the decision here. See Solo IP discuss it here.

4. The WIPO Journal (see here). We found the first article of Volume 5 Issue 1 on the development of the Chinese patent system very interesting (see here).

IPKat Articles by Holly IP

We have now written 10 articles for the IPKat blog. We are very appreciative of the opportunity to write for this prestigious blog. These are the articles:

Taking It Personally: Patents, Medicines and Genetic Markers

This was about whether the European Patent Office was about to change its policy on the way it looks at the feature of patient groups when assessing the novelty of medical use claims. That would clearly have a lot of implications for claims covering personalised medicine inventions.

Is Innovation Always the Best Choice? A Review of the Global Innovation Index 2013

This article discussed what contributes to innovation and how it is measured, together with thoughts on how innovation policies fit into the wider issues of how a country should decide on where to use its resources.

Balancing IP and Human Rights: The Case of Medicines

This article explores the debate around the issue of access to medicines in the developing world, and whether this is a human rights issue.

The Heart of the Matter: One Patent, Two Views

This article reviewed the UK Court decision AGA Medical v Occlutech and contrasted the findings of the UK judge with what happened at opposition at the European Patent Office.

Publication of Patent Applications: Not So Unsexy After All

This is about proposals from the UK IPO to change the way it publishes application. The article considers all the possible consequences of this seemingly mundane issue.

Swiss-type Claims and Double Patenting: Of Opportunities and Anomalies

This article is about Swiss-style claims and the issue of their exact claim scope.
 

Obviousness, common general knowledge and expectations of success: Leo gets a mauling

This is a report of the UK High Court decision TEVA v Leo which concerned inventive step of a pharmaceutical product. We assess the insights the decision provides for how inventive step is applied when assessing an R&D process in the context of incremental inventions.

Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights: a book review


A review that criticised many aspects of the book.
 
The New USPTO Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility

This post gives a brief history of the US Supreme Court cases that led to the new Guidance.

Biotech inventions: controversies, case law, uncertainties and financing

This is the first in a series of articles about ethical and legal aspects of patenting biotechnology and how this fits into financing biotech R&D.

We have also had the following articles published on blogs related to IPKat:

Are We Too Afraid to Rethink the Patent System? (on the PatLit blog)

This article explores whether the patent system is still fit for purpose in the age of open innovation ecosystems.

Claim interpretation, post-grant deletions, "obvious to try" -- and much more: Hospira v Genentech (on the PatLit blog)

This reviewed the UK Court decision Hospira v Genentech.

Ethics Versus Money in University Tech Transfer (on the IP Finance blog)

This article considers whether hard-pressed university tech transfer offices should turn to Patent Assertion Entities to monetise their patents.

The Post-Alice Post-Myriad Post-Mayo World

A series of US Supreme Court decisions have changed the patenting landscape in the US in the areas of computer-implemented, biotech, pharma and chemical inventions.

Mayo Collaborative Services v Prometheus Labs, Inc. (see here) held that a claim to optimising a drug dosage based on measuring metabolites in the blood was not patentable because it related to a ‘law of nature’.

Association For Molecular Pathology et al v Myriad Genetics, Inc. et al (see here) held that DNA molecules found in nature could not be patented.

Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd v CLS Bank International et al (see here) held that ‘abstract ideas’ implemented on a generic computer without providing an ‘improvement’ were not patentable.

This post looks briefly discusses the aftermath of the decisions and how commentators have continued to react to them.

1. Mayo was criticised by the biotech industry for undermining patents relating to diagnostics and possibly causing investors to stay away from the field of personalised medicines. It has led to a tremendous amount of uncertainty as to which diagnostic methods are patentable, but arguably it did not have a large impact outside that specific area.

2. The USPTO Guidelines issued after the Myriad decision (see here) were highly controversial. The USPTO interpreted the decision very broadly so that all products found in nature were unpatentable (not just DNA). In addition many methods involving natural products were unpatentable based on complex and unclear tests devised by the USPTO. Clearly many biotech, pharma and chemical cases will be affected by Myriad.

3. Practitioners were ‘horrified’ by the Myriad Guidelines (see here and here). There continues to be a lot of uncertainty as to when subject matter is sufficiently different from nature to be patentable.

4. However, the Alice decision has probably had the greatest impact to date, directly affecting both prosecution of cases and litigation. At this stage it is not clear how many software patents would be rendered invalid by Alice. Some commentators believe it is very limited decision (see here). Others believe that a majority of the software patents which are being litigated now would be invalid under Alice (see here).

5. A recent Patently-O article lists decisions in which Alice has had an impact (see here). There continues to be a lot of uncertainty as to which computer-implemented methods are patentable.

[Update: see a Vox article about 'crumbling' software patents here]

[Second update: see IPWatchdog on the destruction of the high tech economy here]

You may also wish to see our related posts 10 Points on the New USPTO Myriad/Mayo Guidelines on Patent Eligible Matter and Top 10 Points on Patent Developments and Case Law in the US in 2013.

Observations on Working with Patent Attorneys

1. The amounts patent firms charge varies tremendously. Generally this will be reflected in the quality of work that they do. When choosing a patent firm it is important to make sure that you choose a firm that is consistent with your budget.

2. You should consider choosing a high quality firm if patents are important to the value of the company and if the technology is complicated.

3. In general high quality patent attorneys will be better at drafting patent applications, responding to objections during examination and defending patents against attacks by third parties. When drafting patent applications they are more likely to foresee potential problems and devise possible solutions. They will be proactive in understanding the technology and providing a range of options at each stage. They are better at dealing with ‘difficult’ cases and coming up with appropriate strategies.

4. Bear in mind that the patent attorneys may not be able to advise on the best overall strategy given the commercial goals of the company. Their mindset may be focused on individual inventions and so they may not be in a position to have global view of what is happening. For example they may not take into account that later inventions could be more important, and therefore fewer resources should be used in pursuing patent protection for earlier inventions.

5. Patent attorneys will normally charge based on time and therefore it is important to be efficient in the way that one instructs them. Creative ideas should happen at the start of the project, but then a strict line should be followed as to what will and what won’t be included in the patent application. Constantly changing the scope of the claims during the drafting process will add to the costs.

6. Always be alert to the claim scope that is needed for each case and whether it is going to be realistically possible as examination proceeds. Regularly review cases which are in ‘difficult’ examination to make sure they are worth continuing to pursue. The patent attorneys will not be able to make these decisions for you.

You may also be interested in the related articles Top 10 Reasons for Filing a Patent Application and Advice to Scientists Setting Up a Company.