13th Mar 2024
As reported previously, the EPO has confirmed that it will accelerate opposition proceedings when there are parallel pending infringement or revocation actions before a national court of a contracting EPC state or before the Unified Patent Court (UPC).
12th Dec 2023
In the November 2023 issue of the European Patent Office (EPO) Official Journal, the EPO has confirmed that it will accelerate “parallel opposition proceedings” in the interest of “legal certainty and procedural efficiency, as well as high quality and uniformity in the European patent system”.
13th Nov 2023
On 10 October 2023 the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) issued its decision on consolidated cases G1/22 and G2/22. The two cases raised several interesting points regarding entitlement to claim priority.
21st Jul 2023
This article will focus on the filing of third party observations before the European Patent Office (EPO) and include some insights based on our experience of the use of third party observations.
5th Jul 2023
One month since the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”) opened its doors the UPC Administrative Committee has published some statistics on the type of actions that have been filed in the opening 4 weeks. Leading the way by quite some margin are Protective Letters, with 236 having been received by 26th June 2023.
23rd May 2023
A recent decision, T 1158/20, of the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal tells us that hosting oral proceedings by videoconference can be, for some cases, an equivalent alternative to in-person oral proceedings.
18th Apr 2023
Almost all EPO opposition hearings are now conducted by videoconference (VICO). VICO opposition hearings have been very successful and are no doubt here to stay. In general, the EPO will insist that opposition hearings are carried out by VICO unless there are exceptional reasons for an in-person hearing. Only two VICO hearings have been changed from VICO to be in-person in the last three years.
27th Mar 2023
On 1 February 2022, the EPO Board of Appeal referred, by interlocutory decisions T 1513/17 and T2719/19, two questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal under G1/22 and G2/22. The two questions were as follows:-