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Patent linkage in the proposed amendment to the Polish Reimbursement Act

In Poland, the work on the amendment of The Act of 12 May 2011 on the Reimbursement of Medicines, Foodstuffs Intended for Particular Nutritional Uses and Medical Devices is currently in progress. The project developed by the Ministry of Health was published in the Public Information Bulletin of the Government Legislation Center on 30 June 2021. On the same day, an invitation to public...

Infringements of second medical use patents: an overview of the selected case law

The matter of the protection of new medical uses is one of the most controversial and the most often discussed subjects in patent law. In one of our previous articles in the cycle “Patents Without Secrets” concerning fundamental aspects of the protection of second and further medical uses (“New medical uses: the basic information,” Patents Without Secrets No. 4/2021) we made a promise...

The New EPO Guidelines: An Overview of the Key Changes

Since March 1, 2021 new Guidelines of the European Patent Office (EPO) are in force. Until now, such an update tended to take place annually in November; this shift in calendar is consistent with a broader plan of reforms related to the Strategic Plan 2023 being currently implemented by EPO, which among its key initiatives lists fostering social dialogue and engaging stakeholders. The new...

What is permitted under the TRIPS Agreement when it comes to the scarcity of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines?

In last December we published an issue of our Legal Report concerning the legal aspects of development of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We wrote in it about the race of pharmaceutical companies — at that moment back then only several weeks had passed since Moderna and Pfizer submitted first motions for emergency authorisations of their products and the optimistic news about...

New guidelines published by the President of the Polish Patent Office

In October 2020 the Polish Patent Office (PPO) published the latest version of the President’s guidelines regarding inventions and utility models. The guidelines elaborate quite often on certain matters that are not expressly addressed in relevant statuary and executive provisions, they suggest possible directions for interpretation of binding law, and specify numerous formal and technical...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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