Raids at CeBit trade fair against MP3 players

Patent licensing agency Societa Italiana per lo Sviluppo dell’Elettronica SpA (Sisvel) which licenses MPEG audio patents has organised raids against at least one exhibitor at the CeBIT trade fair in Hannover Germayn. The agency is becoming increasingly active against alleged infringers of their portfolio of MPEG-related patents and has also seized imports at the German border.

Last year SanDisk were obliged to remove their products from the IFA trade fair in Berlin because of a claim against them. SanDisk has subsequently settled its dispute with Sisvel and issued a press release last week.

A rather creative patent assertion process compared to the usual cease and desist letters

Generics Companies attacking Patents

The UK Independent newspaper reports how the stock prices of the major pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca may be affected by two challenges to the validity of some of its patents. The Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals is challenging the patent protecting the product Seroquel in the United States whilst German company Ratiopharm is challenging the validity of the patent protecting Nexium in the European Patent Office.

The US Investment Bank SG Cowen has estimated that these products represent a quarter of AstraZeneca's turnover which could be wiped out if generics companies are allowed to produce copies.

Since I have not looked at the validity challenges in any detail, I cannot comment on the merits of the case. However, the challenges show that the patent system is working in allowing challenges to the validity of bad patents - despite the claims in some quarters. Given the length of the battle between AstraZeneca and the generics companies this does suggest that there is merit in both sides arguments - it will be up to the courts of the patent offices in the end to decide which side has the better arguments and also whether the older work (prior art) cited by the challengers is sufficiently close to lead to revocation of the patent.

EU Commission rules that Microsoft's Patents are not innovative

The Guardian newspaper reports that the European Commission in its dispute with Microsoft concerning anti-trust issues has ruled that the patent protection on Microsoft's protocols is not sufficiently innovative to justify charging for them.

The Commission has reported in a press release that it has issued a statement of objection concerning Microsoft's licensing programme. The press release is somewhat confusing since it talks about four of the 160 claims representing a limited degree of innovation but that the rest of the claims represent implementations of previous work. On the other hand the Commission suggests that the existence of patents represents some degree of innovation. Without a copy of the Statement of Objection it is probably not possible to understand exactly what was said. It would be a sad day if the Commission is somehow overuling the European Patent Office in deciding what is innovative and what is not innovative.

Document Security Systems v European Central Bank

Tiny litte Rochester, New York, based Document Security Systems has filed a claim against the mighty European Central Bank - issuer of the Euro bank notes - alleging infringement of its European Patent 0455750B1. The bank has counter-claimed in the Luxembourg and UK courts alleging that the patent is invalid.

Interestingly the claim for patent infringement has been filed in the European Court of Justice's Court of First Instance as a claim against a European Institution. This is probably the first time that a patent infringement claim has been filed there.

DSS's press release on the matter is at http://www.documentsecurity.com/company/company_news_detail.aspx?id=42

EU Council request EU Commission to report on IP

Meeting in Brussels in December the heads of government of the European Union have asked the EU Commission (basically the EU's civil service) to present a report on IP matters governing, in particular, the quality of the IP system and patents. Hopefully the report will also address such matters as the speed of grant - currently taking between five and six years in some cases. This fits in well with the German government's attempts to accelerate discussions on the European Patent Litigation Agreement.

Press Release of EU Commission

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=DOC/06/3&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Partial Revocation of German Stem Cell Patent

Germany's Patent Court has partially revoked a patent by German researcher Oliver Brüstle on the creation of nerve cells from embryonic stem cells. Greenpeace had opposed the patent stating that anything created from human tissue cannot be the subject of a patent in Germany. The Court agreed - to the detriment of reasearch industry.

Medical companies can only recover their expenditure on research and development through effective patent protection. This leads to a greater variety of pharmaceuticals being available and effective cures for illnesses and diseases being developed. The argument that patent protection leads automatically to higher prices is flawed: in many cases alternative treatments were previously unknown.

Brüstle is going to appeal the decision. Rightly so. Fortunately other countries allow patent protection - at the end of the day it will be German industry that suffers

German EU Presidency to Push for European Patent Litigation Agreement

The German government has announced that one of its priorities for the forthcoming EU presidency is to push for the European Patent Litigation Agreement - great. After the demise of the proposed EU patent, this will hopefully be succesful in getting a simple forum for litigating European Patents - instead of the current unwieldly need to go through multiple fora in different countries. Currently most patent holders just file litigation in one country and use it as an indicator for the results in other countries. Generally most infringers will accept the result in one country and not sell/produce infringing products in other EU countries. Occassionally, however, different courts in different countries issue different results - the EPILADY case being one such case.

Link to press release of German government:

http://www.bmj.de/enid/099bbd52d587204371368a58a5272f05,da76fc706d635f6964092d0933383135093a0979656172092d0932303036093a096d6f6e7468092d093132093a095f7472636964092d0933383135/Pressemitteilungen_und_Reden/Pressemitteilungen_58.html