Posts Tagged: "European patents"

Italian Supreme Court Holds that Rights ‘On Patents’ and ‘To Patents’ are Different Legal Concepts

TPA IMPEX Spa is the owner of European parent n.567044, validated in Italy, regarding a cleaning device for household work. TPA sued DAVY Srl and SIEL srl in the first instance, accusing them of having infringed the Italian portion of the European patent. The defendants answered and counter-claimed for nullification of the the Italian portion of the European patent. The Court of first instance upheld the counter-claim of the defendants, declaring the Italian fraction of the European patent invalid with reference to most of the claims. It concluded that the defendant was entitled to manufacture and sell its cleaning devices. TPA IMPEX appealed. It asked in part that the judgment should be declared void because the inventor was not involved in the proceedings, thus violating Article 102 of the Italian Civil Procedure Code.

Estimating the cost for filing, obtaining and maintaining patents across the globe

In several jurisdictions across the globe, the costs are a function of various variables such as the mode of filing, the type of applicant, the number of pages of the specification and claims, and the number of claims/independent claims/multiple dependent claims. The costs generally have three components (official, associate/attorney, and translation) that are spread across the different stages of the patenting process (filing, examination and prosecution, grant, and maintenance or renewal or annuity). For instance, let us consider a PCT application filed by a large entity comprising 50 pages (including 5 pages of drawings and 10 pages of claims) and 20 claims (including 3 independent claims) which is to be electronically filed in the top 10 jurisdictions, namely Canada (CA), China (CN), European Patent Office (EP), Israel (IL), India (IN), Iran (IR), Japan (JP), South Korea (KR), Russia (RU), and the United States (US)