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In a major victory for a foreign patent owner, Pfizer has stopped a local company infringing its patent for fluconazole.

US: A federal judge in San Francisco ruled December 7 that a patent for DNA analysis owned by Swiss biotechnology company Hoffman-La Roche was obtained by deliberately misleading the USPTO and is invalid. US District Judge Vaughn Walker upheld a challenge by Promega which argued that scientists got the patent in 1990 through false claims. Those scientists worked for Cetus, which sold rights to the patent to Hoffman La Roche in 1991. The patented substance is called Taq DNA Polymerase. Cetus inventors had convinced the patent office that they had a substance better than those developed in the 1980s. Hoffman-La Roche is appealing, and contends that the ruling invalidates the patent for only one form of Taq, and not for the more common and lucrative recombinant Taq.

USPTO demands review of Y2K

Brazilian reform provokes alarm

The recent decision in Kimberley-Clark v Proctor & Gamble (Court of Appeal, November 24 1999) clarifies that the UK Court retains discretion to refuse patent amendment applications.

In Poland, utility models are distinguished as separate subjects of industrial property from inventions. Pursuant to the statutory definition, utility models are new and useful solutions of a technical character concerning the shape, structure or configuration of an object having a solid form. A utility model, like an invention, is considered new if it is not a part of the state of art, which means it has not been made available to the public before the date determining the priority to exclusive right (protection). However, unlike patentable inventions a utility model does not have to meet the grounds of non-obviousness (invention level). Therefore protection can be granted to a utility model despite the fact that for a qualified person it is obvious that the model originates from prior art.

The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court has issued a decision in a case where the applicant for a patent had in 1997, by virtue of Article 27 and Article 70 (7) of the TRIPs Agreement, amended the claims of an international patent application filed in 1993 to cover product protection for pharmaceuticals.

Filing @ USPTO

UK & Netherlands: European law firm Eversheds and leading Netherlands practice Boekel De Nerée merged on January 1 2000. The new firm combines Boekel De Nerée's 250 staff and Eversheds' 3,300 staff.

Chipie wins global victory