Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Patents

Germany is a leading venue for patent litigation, with about 60% of European patent cases heard in its courts. Especially in pharmaceutical, biological, and chemical patents, German case law provides key interpretations and legal guidance, notably on issues like 'state of the art' and substance identification. This handbook highlights core principles and trends in German jurisprudence to support arguments across jurisdictions. Advantages at a glance: Structured overview of German patent law English translations of major rulings Focus on pharma, bio, and chemical patent issues

Klappentext

The topic of pharmaceutical, biological and chemical patents is a special matter within European and German patent law. Structural alternations give rise to the question under what circumstances they can be novel and in which cases they are included under state of the art. But even if a substance is prior art, a new medical use of it can be patented, as such medical use patents are politically intended to promote medical research. On the other hand, it is unclear how to deal with natural occurrences of a substance in terms of its accessibility an bioethics. It must also be understood how different identifications of a substance and the resulting patents interrelate with each other, i.e. how their scopes of protections are defined. This is problematic especially because of the absolute substance of protection, which includes all conceivable uses and methods. The past decisions of the ECJ as regards broccoli-and-tomato-patents, as well as embryonic stem cells have highlighted the importance of this field of law.