UK Court of Appeal Confirms Test for Patent Contributory Infringement
.jpg)
The UK Court of Appeal has allowed some of the grounds of appeal from a High Court decision on the infringement and validity of two patents relating to wound-dressings. The Court disagreed with the construction the High Court had put on the claims of the first patent and held that the Appellant did not infringe. On the ground of claim construction the Court also held that one of the asserted claims of the second patent was invalid.
Interestingly the Court found that Arnold J had applied the wrong test for contributory infringement taking into account the recent Court of Appeal decision on the interpretation of contributory infringement (see article below by same author on 22 October).
In the High Court Arnold J had upheld the patentee's claims to priority of its PCT application based on a US patent which had previously been held invalid. The patents in suit (two) were for improvements to the basic invalid patent. The patentee's claim to priority was challenged on the basis that it lacked standing to claim priority. However, Arnold J stated that what mattered was whether priority had been validly claimed for the patents in suit, both of which were European patents (as designated on the PCT application). He held that the only part of the PCT application that was material to the issue of entitlement to priority was the part that related to the European patent and not the United Kingdom national patent which was in the name of the applicant and its subsidiary. The Judge held that the patents were valid and entitled to their priority dates.
