Plausibility – an unsolved problem in patent granting
The decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (GBK) of the European Patent Office (EPO) in the currently pending proceedings G2/21 is awaited with great excitement. This could have a significant impact on the future filing strategy of applicants, because at its core is the question of when an invention is “ready” to file.
The European patent grows to 39 contracting states with the accession of Montenegro
On July 15, 2022, Montenegro completed the final step towards accession to the European Patent Convention (EPC) by depositing its instrument of accession and became the 39th member state of the European Patent Organization (EPO) on October 1, 2022.
Amendments of regulations before the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA)
In the months of May and July 2022, some amendments relevant for practice before the DPMA will enter into force. The most important ones in brief are listed here.
Intellectual Property specialists Prüfer & Partner are celebrating as the firm together with its Managing Partner Andreas Jacob were listed in the prestigious ranking Word Trademark Review WTR 1000 2022.
Prüfer & Partner has again been awarded by the renowned professional publisher Legal500 in the field of Intellectual Property Law, both in the category “Prosecution” and in “Litigation”!
“All good things are worth waiting for”. Now the time has finally come:
The Unified Patent Court has announced on its website that it plans to commence operations on April 1, 2023.
Roadmap and preparations for the EU Unitary Patent and EU Patent Court System
As previously reported, following ratification in Germany, the way is cleared for the European patent with unitary effect (EU unitary patent) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). As a result of the deposit of the instrument of ratification by Austria on 18 January 2022, the “provisional application of the EPC/UPC” has now entered into force.
Discussion of compulsory licenses in the COVID-19 pandemic
With the Epidemic Protection Act of March 27, 2020, Germany declared an “emergency of national dimension” in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, tensions and international pressure to “abrogate certain IP rights” increased.
The German Federal Constitution Court clears the way for the UPC
The German Federal Constitutional Court rejected the two pending applications for a temporary injunction directed against the Act on the Agreement of 19 February 2013 on a Unified Patent Court. With this decision, the Federal Constitutional Court has cleared the way for a timely ratification of the UPC Agreement and thus for the entry into force of the Unified Patent Court UPC, probably in 2022.
