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It is established practice at the European Patent Office to offer accelerated processing of patent applications simply on request by the applicant, without the need to pay additional fees. This is in contrast to other patent offices, such as the USPTO or the UKIPO, which will only allow accelerated processing in specific circumstances (for example, when potentially infringing activity has been identified) or for particular categories of applications (for example, inventions having an environmental benefit).

In a recent ruling (February 2 2016) the Court of Appeal The Hague assessed the validity of a patent and SPC of Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The Court further decided on awarding costs based on European directive 2004/48/EC.

Every week the Managing IP blog rounds up some of the interesting and unusual IP news appearing on the web. Here’s a selection of recent items

A new collective agreement on employee inventions, negotiated between two major parties of the Swedish labour market, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) and the Council for Negotiation and Cooperation (PTK – being a body of 25 trade unions), has recently entered into force in Sweden. The new agreement, commonly known as The Inventor Agreement, applies to employee inventions reported to the employer as of December 1 2015.

The Athens Single Member Court of First Instance recently granted a preliminary injunction based on a patent despite the fact that the Opposition Division of the EPO, a few days before the preliminary injunction hearing, had revoked the same patent.

Recently, the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) had to decide on the request of a complainant, himself sued for patent infringement, to become a party in an ex parte reinstatement procedure concerning the allegedly infringed patent. After the European patent was maintained in opposition in amended form, the patentee failed to perform the required validation steps in time before the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO). Having been informed by the GPTO about the loss of his German patent, the patentee requested reinstatement and simultaneously performed the required validation actions.

The use of hyperlinks may be considered as a trade-related copyright infringement under certain circumstances.

In an interview with James Nurton Aybüke Semerci, Senior Technology Transfer Specialist at Koç University, discusses recent developments and initiatives in Turkey

The intellectual property headlines in the past week included Fox News settling a fair use case, the Ninth Circuit ruling on a right of publicity issue, the IP legacy of Justice Scalia, Lenovo and Qualcomm agreeing a China patent licensing deal, and Polsinelli reportedly taking a substantial number of Novak Druce lawyers

A new report from Docket Navigator reviewing 2015 patent litigation concludes that – while the number of cases filed in US district courts increased – the number of infringement accusations and the complexity of individual cases is decreasing. It also revealed the entities that filed the most cases, the top defendants and the busiest law firms