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The Unified Patent Court: A new episode in the long-running series

The Unified Patent Court and innumerable obstacles on the way to its launch have already been featured in our Legal Reports (see: WTS Legal Report No. 6/2020 and WTS Legal Report No. 7/2020). We decided that, at the beginning of the new year, it is worth to return to this controversial subject and present our take on the recent developments in this series that has already been running for...

Patent rights: an obstacle for development of a vaccine against COVID-19?

Recently we have been anxiously following a race of major pharmaceutical concerns: who would be the first to develop an effective vaccine against COVID-19? On 8 November Pfizer announced that their vaccine has an effectivity rate of 90%; just a week later Moderna "outbid" it, boasting 94,5% effectivity rate of their product. The dominant narrative emphasizes the common effort of the whole...

Limitations to patent rights: compulsory licenses in the Polish legal system

Both Polish and international law provide certain institutions that — even though not extensively used in practice — allow to interfere with a patent holder's exclusive right to use an invention. We would like to dedicate this entry in our cycle Patents Without Secrets to offer you an overview of the Polish regulation in the area of compulsory licenses. This issue gains particular...

First filing requirement in Poland

Many states adopt in their legislation certain limitations when it comes to permissibility of filing patent applications before foreign offices: usually they are imposed on citizens of those countries or their residents; they can apply as well to inventions developed within their territories. Such regulations of given states provide that the first filing for an invention must take place with...

Proceedings before the UPSTO: Request for Continued Examination (RCE)

We present you the third entry in our cycle "Patents without Secrets” that is dedicated to regulations related to patent procedure in the American jurisdiction. Many of our Clients express their interest in seeking patent protection in the USA, therefore we would like to provide you with all the essential information regarding proceedings before the UPSTO. Having discussed already such topics...

AETR Doctrine and Permissibility of Ratifying the UPC Agreement (publication)

The post is available only in Polish.

The claim to increase a remuneration for an employee’s invention in the Polish legal system

Quite often our Clients approach us with questions concerning the regulations of renumeration for employees’ inventions in the Polish legal system, particularly in the context of the claim under Article 23 of the Act of June 30, 2020 on Industrial Property Law (from now on as IPL). In this issue of the WTS Legal Report we would like to provide you with a detailed overview of this matter,...

Proceedings before the UPSTO: The continuation-in-part application

We would like to present you the second entry in our cycle "Patents without Secrets” that is dedicated to regulations related to patent procedure in the American jurisdiction. Many of our Clients express their interest in seeking patent protection in the USA, therefore we would like to provide you with all the essential information regarding proceedings before the UPSTO. In the following...

The judgment of the CJEU in the Santen case: A new medical use of an existing product and an SPC eligibility

When it comes to conditions of the grant of a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), we covered this matter in our previous Legal Report that was published over summer. We indicated that issues related to SPCs are a subject of extensive, continuously expanding caselaw of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Whereas the last time we focused on the decision of April 30, 2020 in...

Proceedings before the UPSTO: a provisional patent application

This is the first entry in our cycle "Patents without Secrets” that opens a series of articles dedicated to the American IP law. Many of our clients express their interest in seeking patent protection in the USA, therefore we would like to provide you with all the essential information regarding proceedings before the UPSTO. In the following article we invite you to explore the institution...

The conditions for granting an SPC: a product is covered by patent claims if it was identifiable at a filing date (the judgment of the CJEU in Royalty Pharma case)

The conditions for granting a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) laid down in the EU law quite often raise some serious doubts and notoriously cause problems in practice. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has frequently presented its position on that matter: the judgment in the case C-650/17 Royalty Pharma Collection Trust against Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt of April...

Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC)

The post is available only in Polish.

Deposit of Biological Materials

In this issue of the WTS Legal Report we would like to discuss a matter of great practical significance: Polish and international regulations concerning the deposit of biological materials. One of the grounds on which the Polish Patent Office can make a decision refusing patent protection is insufficient disclosure of an invention (Article 49 Section 1(2) of Act of June 30, 2000 on...