Canada has filed its Statement of Defence in Eli Lilly’s NAFTA challenge to the ‘promise utility doctrine’ applied by Canadian courts to invalidate its Strattera and Zyprexa patents. The Statement of Defence characterizes Eli Lilly’s claims as, among other things, seeking to transform the NAFTA tribunal into “a supranational court of appeal from reasoned, principled, and procedurally just domestic court decisions.”
Tag Archives: Patents
Comparative Biologics
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its decision in Abbvie Deutschland Gmbh & Co. v. Janssen Biotech, Inc. relating to patents on directed to antibodies that bind to and neutralize the activity of human interleukin 12. The CAFC found there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find the patents invalid for lack of written description.
US Supreme Court on Patents
Today, the United States Supreme Court issued two decisions on patents. In Limelight Networks v. Akamai Tech the Court held that direct infringement was required for a finding of inducing infringed. In Nautilus v. BioSig the Court considered patent claim indefiniteness.
Top Patentees in Canada 2013
BlackBerry tops the list of owners receiving the most Canadian patents during 2013. The others in the top five were Qualcomm, Schlumberger, P&G and LG Electronics. Approximately 23,800 Canadian patents were granted last year to about 9900 applicants.
Patent Volume in 2013
The number of patent applications published in 2013 or that entered national phase in Canada in 2013 was approximately the same as in 2012 at about 34,900 application. Smart & Biggar, Gowlings and BLG top the list of firms by volume of applications.
APIs and Sheep
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued several decisions on intellectual property, including Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc. on copyright in APIs and In RE Roslin Institute on the patentability of Dolly the Sheep.
Smartphone “Posner Appeal”
The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit released its decision in Apple Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., the appeal from Judge Posner’s decision on smartphone patent litigation between the two companies. Judge Posner had denied both infringement actions on the basis that neither side could prove damages. In an opinion for the court, along with two opinions dissenting-in-part, the CAFC reversed-in-part, but affirmed, among other things, that Motorola was not entitled to an injunction for infringement of a FRAND-committed patent.
IP Treaties
The government has tabled five intellectual property treaties in the House of Commons:
- Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (“Madrid Protocol”),
- Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks (“Singapore”),
- Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (“Nice”),
- Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs (“Hague”), and
- the Patent Law Treaty.
Burden of Proof
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court held that the patentee has the burden of proving infringement when a licensee seeks declaratory judgment, in Medtronic v. Mirowski (PDF), reversing the lower court.
Biologics
In a decision issued today, Justice Hughes considered the breadth of the claims in the first [see update below] biologic patent infringement trial decision of the Federal Court. The patent at issue was found valid and infringed.