Thursday 3 April 2008

roshana

South Africa - new patent judgments

Two new patent judgments from the Supreme Court of Appeal are available. Both deal with the absence of an inventive step and, although marked unreportable, will no doubt be of interest to practitioners in the field, given the stature of the court. Provisional revocation was granted in both instances, providing the patentee the opportunity to amend the patent. See Buckman Laboratories v Bromine Compounds (655/06) [2008] ZASCA 37 (28 March 2008) and Northpark Trading 3 (Pty) Ltd v Ausplow (Pty) Ltd (278/07) [2008] ZASCA 46 (31 March 2008).

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Anonymous
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4 April 2008 at 09:22 delete

This is a remarkable shift from the approach where any and every insignificant difference from the prior art is regarded as an inventive step.

Its way too early to call it a "sea-change", but in one month the ZASCA has trebled the number of judgments finding inventions to be obvious.

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