Source: http://blog.ksnh.eu/en/category/european-patent-law/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 02:39:41+00:00

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Could The World Bank Become Ultimate Supreme Patent Court of U.S. And EU Under TAFTA/TTIP?
As everyone is aware, a new European Unified Patent Court system is in the making. The Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) has been signed by all of the EU Member States but Spain and Poland and is now waiting for at least 13 ratifications (including Germany, United Kingdom, and France) in order to eventually enter into force. And, there is a fierce debate as to whether or not the effects of this new system will be beneficial.
However, there appears to be some chance that another concurrent aspect of recent developments of relevance for Intellectual Property might get overlooked.
The Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed free trade area between the United States and the European Union. As we can learn from Wikipedia, it was considered in the 1990s and again in 2007. In 2013, “United States-European Union High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth” recommended the start of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It represents potentially the largest regional free-trade agreement in history, covering more than 40% of world GDP, and accounting for large shares of world trade and foreign direct investment.
On 14 June, Member States gave the European Commission the green light to start trade and investment talks with the United States. Currently, the negotiations are stalled due to the U.S. Government shutdown but there is little doubt that the talks will resume as soon as Government business is re-started in Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately, the negotiations are shrouded in secrecy, and so far no meaningful conference documents appear to have been leaked. It appears, however, quite clear that TAFTA/TTIP is not negotiated to be mainly about reducing customs tariffs or the like. On the contrary, the entire project is designed as an approach to revise a huge field of national U.S. and regional EU laws with effect on trade. It might well be seen as some sort of a ‘backdoor’ to amend many established acts enshrined in the respective statute books for the sake of creating trans-atlantic level field for influential businesses.
[O]ne aspect of the agreement, known as “investor-state dispute resolution,” would allow a company to appeal a regulatory rule or law to an international court, most likely the World Bank. The international body would be given authority to impose economic sanctions against any country that violated its verdict, including the United States. The international body would be given authority to impose economic sanctions against any country that violated its verdict, including the United States.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It also comprises clauses for investor-state dispute resolution.
In December 2012, drug giant Eli Lilly brought a NAFTA case against the Canadian government after it invalidated a patent for one of the company’s medications.
In November 2012, Eli Lilly and Company initiated formal proceedings under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to attack Canada’s standards for granting drug patents, claiming that the invalidation of a patent violated three special investor privileges granted by the agreement. The investor privileges provisions included in NAFTA and other U.S. “free trade” agreements (FTAs) empower private firms to directly challenge government policies before foreign tribunals comprised of three private-sector attorneys, to claim that the policies undermine investors’ “expected future profits,” and to demand taxpayer compensation. Eli Lilly’s NAFTA investor-state challenge marks the first attempt by a patent-holding pharmaceutical corporation to use the extraordinary investor privileges provided by U.S. “trade” agreements as a tool to push for greater monopoly patent protections, which increase the cost of medicines for consumers and governments. Eli Lilly is demanding $100 million in compensation.
Eli Lilly launched its NAFTA attack after Canadian courts invalidated Eli Lilly’s monopoly patent rights for an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug called Strattera. The Canadian courts did so after determining that Eli Lilly had presented insufficient evidence (a single study involving 22 patients) when filing for the patent to show that Strattera would deliver the long-term benefits promised by the company. While the $100 million NAFTA investor-state compensation demand relates to revocation of the Strattera patent, Eli Lilly makes clear in its formal “Notice of Intent” to Canada that it is not only challenging the invalidation of its particular patent, but Canada’s entire legal doctrine for determining an invention’s “utility” and, thus, a patent’s validity. While pushing for an entirely different patent standard, Eli Lilly, the fifth-largest U.S. pharmaceutical corporation, is demanding $100 million from Canadian taxpayers as compensation for Canada’s enforcement of its existing patent standards.
Well, it appears as if the Elly Lilly proceedings under NAFTA rules have not been concluded yet, and no details are available with regard to the exposition of European Intellectual Propery statutes to any TAFTA/TTIP investor-state dispute resolution clauses. Hence, there is a lot of speculation. In summary, this news sound as if NAFTA may have precedence over ordinary patent law.
Could also take TAFTA/TTIP priority over ordinary EU and U.S. patent law? Perhaps even eventually forcing the EU (and, with it, EPC) to abandon the technicality requirement in the patent statues? Nobody knows for sure so far because of the negotiation documents are so sensitive that the general public may not be allowed to read them in advance.
And, of course, any disputes on the potential benefits and perils of the Unified Patent Court could well be dwarfed if TAFTA/TTIP really would render something like the World Bank into sort of an ultimate Supreme Patent Court of the U.S. and EU combined. Proper IT laws of EU and US preferably should determine IP conflict resolution procedures under TAFTA/TTIP, not vice versa. This is a proper example of a tail wagging the dog, isn’t it?
I can’t imagine that such move would be greeted in particular by SME businesses throughout the EU. Any legal certainty might be deteriorated if the World Bank could invalidate well-established national or regional law in the field of Intellectual Property by a scratch of a pen.
Be on the guard, stay tuned.
[UPDATE 2013-10-22] For more details on the Elly Lilly Case, see this article by MARC-ANDRÉ SÉGUIN on nationalmagazine.ca.
US Federal Circuit: Business Method patentable as Claims show technological Advance – How would Europe decide?
The patent US 7,346,545, relating to delivering copyrighted media products through a server free of charge in exchange for watching advertisements, has been enforced by Ultramercial against a number of Internet media competitors, like Hulu, WildTangent and YouTube. In August 2010 the 545 patent has been found invalid by a California District Court in view of the Bilski v. Kappos ruling which has been issued shortly before by the US Supreme Court (CV 09-06918). For further information on this case, please see my earlier posting here.
To be on the safe side, the District Court applied a two-stage approach, that is, as a screening filter, the CAFC’s machine-or-transformation test and then the SCOTUS abstract idea test.
The MOT test failed as the District Court found that the “mere act of storing media on computer memory does not tie the invention to a machine in any meaningful way”. Further, the Court identified “using advertisement as a currency” as the core principle of the patent, while the claims do not cite any concrete features as to how the core principle can be implemented.
Some observers criticised the District Court’s reasoning as being capable to kill any invention where a key concept can be labelled ‘abstract’ even if the invention is clearly limited to an electronic implementation and even if the electronic implementation is central to the idea.
The plain language of the [patent act] provides that any new, non-obvious, and fully disclosed technical advance is eligible for protection.
After all, unlike the Copyright Act which divides ideas from expression, the Patent Act covers and protects any new and useful technical advance, including applied ideas.
Far from abstract, advances in computer technology—both hardware and software—drive innovation in every area of scientific and technical endeavor.
One of our most successful presentations on business trips to Asia in recent years was the one about “Dos and Don’ts in European Filings” covering many practical hints that should be observed – possibly already at the drafting stage – upon filing direct EP applications with the EPO or entering the EP regional phase via the PCT route.
Does Art 5 UPP Regulation enable CJEU Jurisdiction over Substantive Patent Law?
Will this sky-reaching architecture host substantive patent law one day?
The short answer is … we don’t know yet!
A slightly longer answer is: It will, in the end, depend on the CJEU’s own interpretation of Article 5 of the Unitary Patent Protection Regulation (UPPR) and its understanding of the nature of the Unitary Patent Court Agreement (UPCR).
The CJEU is not a regular third instance above the two instances of the Unified Patent Court.
The centralised structure of the Unified Patent Court – involving a Central Division in the first instance and a sole Court of Appeal as the second instance – will largely ensure uniform interpretation of substantive patent law anyway.
As substantive patent law is largely harmonised in Europe already and thus falls under the acte-clair-doctrine, there are only very limited substantive patent law issues left that are in risk of being interpreted differently in different countries (or by different local/regional UPC divisions) and would thus need to be decided by a preliminary ruling according to Art 267 TFEU.
1. The European patent with unitary effect shall confer on its proprietor the right to prevent any third party from committing acts against which that patent provides protection throughout the territories of the participating Member States in which it has unitary effect, subject to applicable limitations.
2. The scope of that right and its limitations shall be uniform in all participating Member States in which the patent has unitary effect.
3. The acts against which the patent provides protection referred to in paragraph 1 and the applicable limitations shall be those defined by the law applied to European patents with unitary effect in the participating Member State whose national law is applicable to the European patent with unitary effect as an object of property in accordance with Article 7.
2) order the Kingdom of Spain (Case C-274/11) and the Italian Republic (Case C-295/11) to take charge of their own costs and the Council of the European Union and the interveners to bear their own costs .
Just to remind you: Both cases have been filed by Italy and Spain, respectively, in order to challenge the decision of the EU Council to allow the instrument of enhanced co-operation provided by the Lisbon Treaty (under certain conditions disputed in the lawsuit). But Mr Bot’s Opinion is not necessarily the last word on that matter: First, the Court is free to depart from Mr Bot’s Opinion, second, at some later point in time a case might be filed allowing CJEU to have their say as to whether or not the Unitary Patent package as debated in the Parliament just this minute is compatible with EU treaties or not.
The Rapkay report was approved by 484 votes to 164 with 35 abstentions.
The Baldassarre resolution was approved by 481 votes to 152 with 49 abstentions.
The Lehne report was approved by 483 votes to 161, with 38 abstentions.
The final list of amendments tabled is available here. It looks as if this amendment #70 with some clarifications might prevail.
Also on December 11, 2012, at the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg the Attorney General who is in charge of joined cases C-274/11 C-295/11 (Annulment of Council Decision 2011/167/EU of 10 March 2011 authorising enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection (OJ 2011 L 76, p. 53) Misuse of powers – Failure to respect the judicial system of the European Union) will deliver his or her Opinion. The Court might later well derive from that but the Opinion will, as usual, give a clue as to whether or not Spain and Italy might have some chance to spoil the project of enhanced co-operation in the field of patents at last.
According to the closing note at the very end of the text of the Draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court (Document 16222/12 [2012-11-14]), indication is given that the Agreement is scheduled to be signed on February 18, 2013 in Brussels. After that date, a rush to the respective national Parliaments of all of the participating Member States is attributed top priority on the agendas of the Governments; c.f. Document 16221/12 [2012-11-14] Updated draft declaration of the contracting Member States concerning the preparations for the coming into operation of the UPC agreement.
(1) This Agreement shall enter into force on 1 January 2014 or on the first day of the fourth month after the deposit of the thirteenth instrument of ratification or accession in accordance with Article 58a, including the three Member States in which the highest number of European patents had effect in the year preceding the year in which the signature of the Agreement takes place or on the first day of the fourth month after the date of entry into force of the amendments to Regulation (EC) 44/2001 concerning its relationship with this Agreement, whichever is the latest.
Well, what would happen if the quorum of 13 ratifications including Germany, United Kingdom and France (i.e. the three Member States in which the highest number of European patents) is not reached in some foreseeable future due to some political misfortune? Take, for example, a purely fictional case where the United Kingdom instead of timely ratifying the Agreement holds a referendum resulting in a margin of votes in favour of leaving the EU at all (note also this and that).
As already reported (here and there), up to now the EU has not published the compromise proposal which was subject-matter of the discussion in JURI last Monday. The only source available to the general public appeared to be a leak originally published on the website of Pinpact.com. They simply have put a PNG graphics file on their server showing a single page comprising the wording of Article 5a (new) as well as Recitals 9 and 10 in the style on a non-paper, i.e. without any Official headings etc..
The proposed new Article 5a of the UPP Regulation is based on the assumption that it would seem sufficient that the UPP Regulation itself provides for the right of the patent proprietor to prevent third parties from committing acts against which the patent provides protection. These acts cover both the direct and the indirect use of the patented invention by a third party (as initially spelled out in more detail in the former Articles 6 and 7 of the UPP Regulation). The right of the patent proprietor to prevent third parties from such acts is subject to applicable limitations (as initially spelled out in former Article 8 of the UPP Regulation). The details of this right and its limitations are now determined pursuant to new Article 5a(3) of the UPP Regulation – by reference to the national law of the Member State applicable under Article 10 of the UPP Regulation of which Articles 14f to 14i of the UPC Agreement (as now amended to apply also to European patents with unitary effect, see in more detail point 3 below) are an integral part.
The UPP Regulation furthermore stipulates in new Article 5a(2) that the right to prevent third parties from infringing the patent and the limitations to this right shall be uniform in all participating Member States in order to satisfy the requirement of the Regulation’s legal basis, i.e. Article 118(1) TFEU which provides for the establishment of uniform protection. This means that participating Member States are prevented from adopting in their national law provisions which would undermine the uniformity of protection.

References: v. 
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 Art 267
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