Whatever Happened To Gat? Conservation Of Energy; Patenting Lives

Does anyone know ...

... what has happened to Case C-4/03 Gesellschaft für Antriebstechnik mbH & Co.KG (GAT) v Lamellen und Kupplungsbau Beteiligungs KG (LuK)? This was a 2002breference to the European Court of Justice of the next question:

"Is Article 16(4) of ... the Brussels Convention to last interpreted every bit important that the exclusive jurisdiction conferred past times that provision on the courts of the Contracting State inward which the deposit or registration of a patent has been applied for, has taken house or is nether the damage of an international convention deemed to bespeak hold taken house alone applies if proceedings (with erga omnes effect) are brought to declare the patent invalid or are proceedings deemed to last concerned alongside the validity of patents inside the important of the aforementioned provision where the accused inward a patent infringement activity or the claimant inward a declaratory activity to institute that a patent is non infringed pleads that the patent is invalid or a nullity as well as that in that place is also no patent infringement for that reason, irrespective of whether the courtroom seised of the proceedings considers the plea to last substantiated or unsubstantiated as well as of when the plea is raised during the course of teaching of the proceedings."

The Advocate General issued his Opinion inward September of in conclusion year, which agency that the ruling is nearly 8 months overdue now. Has the representative settled? Is the interrogation likewise hard for the ECJ to dominion on? Is the courtroom objecting to it beingness phrased inward such a long as well as complex sentence? Is it beingness consolidated alongside other cases? Or is it stuck inward the same nighttime hole that the BioMild as well as Postkantoor cases disappeared into earlier they finally emerged? would last grateful for whatever clue. Merpel adds, does anyone bespeak hold an English linguistic communication language re-create of the Advocate General's Opinion?


Laws of physics foul patent application again

This picayune representative popped upward on the Lawtel subscription-based legal data service this morning: Duckett v Patent Office, a ruling yesterday past times Patents Court novel man child Mr Justice Kitchin.

Duckett applied to patent an project design alongside a propulsion unit of measurement alongside electrical as well as hydraulic systems which, he said, used an alternator to hold a battery at amount accuse acre providing farther electricity for auxiliary power. The hearing officeholder ruled that this application contravened the constabulary of conservation of loose energy as it appeared to exercise loose energy out of nothing. In whatever event, acre the project design was novel, it was obvious. The application was refused for non having industrial application (since it broke the constabulary of conservation of energy) as well as for lack of inventive step.

Kitchin J dismissed Duckett's appeal, belongings that the hearing officer's determination was reasonable. The project design was indeed non alone obvious but reverse to well-established principles of physics. is starting to wonder whether, inward the low-cal of a recent spate of applications to patent inventions that run reverse to the laws of physics, we're nearly to encounter a rewrite of the laws of physics ... Stop dreaming, says Merpel.


Patenting Lives

's friend Johanna Gibson wants to remind you lot nearly the Patenting Lives Conference, which takes house next calendar week (programme here; registration degree here). Backed past times the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Patenting Lives volition last held at the Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck College, London. Patenting Lives is non merely a boring, crusty onetime conference - it's a multidisciplinary celebration of the diverse dimensions to the patenting of life as well as it's non fifty-fifty that love (£150 for the amount 2 days; reductions for one-day-only participants as well as students; exceptional rates for anyone accompanied past times his/her clone ...)

The projection also has its ain blog now - as well as thus exercise hollo back to catch it.