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Since the US Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International, virtually all Patents for Internet-related Software inventions have been declared invalid in patent proceedings before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). In DDR Holdings v. Hotels.com, a patent relating to an invention in this field has now been upheld […]

China is one of the countries that examines trademark applications not only for absolute grounds for refusal, but also for Risk of Confusion with earlier Trademarks. It is not uncommon for Trademarks that are not considered to be confusingly similar in practice to be opposed. While the Office has only rarely taken coexistence agreements into

Until 5 years ago, the boundary in the USA was very wide for what was accessible to patent protection. This contrasts with Europe, where the technicality of the new claim features has always been decisive. With the decision in Mayo v. Prometheus, the Supreme Court has restricted this liberal practice. The core of the disputed

There were over 104,000 patents in force in Switzerland at the end of 2014. 93% of these have been examined by the European Patent Office and granted with effect for Switzerland. Only the remaining 7% are so-called unexamined national Patents. In contrast, there are only around three dozen patent lawsuits per year in Switzerland. This

The Beijing Intermediate and Higher People’s Court have exclusive jurisdiction to review decisions of the Chinese Patent Office. They not only deal with rejection decisions on Patent Applications, but also administrative decisions in post-grant Cancellation Proceedings. In 2013, 641 cases were dealt with. Some important rules for practice can be derived from this volume of

In a product claim, the product to be patented is generally defined by its design features. However, it often happens that a product claim contains steps of the manufacturing process. The Japanese Supreme Court has now recently ruled on the admissibility and scope of protection of such claims, forcing a departure from previous practice. Teva

The patentability of a method of presenting information can result from a special type of presentation that takes into account the characteristics of human perception and thus enables or improves the perceptibility of the information. In contrast, patentability cannot generally be derived from the actual content of the displayed information. The extent to which information

Patents that are essential for the use of an international standard, such as UMTS, can be licensed by the patent holder under FRAND conditions. However, anyone who sells products without obtaining the necessary patent licenses is committing patent infringement. The IP High Court of Tokyo now had to decide whether and to what extent damages