The European Commission has this week published a wide-ranging and ambitious Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, and an Action Plan on Intellectual Property. Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe The new pharmaceutical strategy for Europe is a key pillar of the European Health Union, which President von der Leyen called for in her 2020 State of the Union … Read more

New MHRA Brexit guidance was released on 1 September 2020 (and further supplemented in October 2020), after the previous UK Government guidance in relation to pharmaceuticals was withdrawn in January 2020.  The guidance confirms the regulatory steps required for grandfathering of centralised marketing authorisations to ensure that they are replaced by the UK marketing authorisations … Read more

Key recent developments in the United Kingdom and Europe relating to patents and the pharmaceutical sector In this edition we cover several important UK decisions relating to Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and FRAND licensing, including the UK Supreme Court decision in Unwired Planet, a subsequent decision concerning jurisdictional issues in FRAND proceedings and a decision striking out … Read more

From 1 January 2021, the UK will set up its own GI scheme which will be managed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The scheme will be open to producers from the UK and from other countries worldwide. New GIs can be registered under the scheme from 1 January. Read more

On 6 November 2020, the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) issued a written decision in case T 844/18, which concerned whether or not the Broad Institute’s patent (EP 2 771 468) relating to CRISPR gene editing technology could validly claim priority from several US provisional applications. In summary, the TBA confirmed that the applicable rules … Read more

A 4:3 majority of the High Court of Australia has today overturned the Full Federal Court’s unanimous decision in Calidad v Seiko (2019) 270 FCR 572. Today’s decision breaks with the Privy Council’s 1911 decision in Menck1 and holds that in Australia the doctrine of ‘exhaustion of rights’ should apply, not one of ‘implied licence’. Read more

In our 2019 report “Open Innovation: Collaborate To Innovate” we shared our insights into the world of open collaboration, assisted by contributions from a wide range of our clients. In Issue 3 in our series of deep dive articles, we explore how competition rules support innovation. Read more

In conjunction with our Real Estate division, the Herbert Smith Freehills London IP group has published a guide to the intellectual property issues that can arise in relation to real estate. It can be the case that sites or buildings are purchased without necessarily considering fully whether the underlying intellectual property assets are being transferred and what future access or control the new owner may need, or the vendor wish to retain. Read more