UK PATENTS


for impartiality is shared between the expert and the lawyers who instruct the expert. In practice, lawyers oſt en draſt expert reports on the basis of what an expert has told them, and it was stated that the responsibility to ensure that a report is objective falls squarely on the lawyer’s shoulders.


To show impartiality, an expert’s report should give a balanced interpretation of all the relevant documents. If an expert has given evidence on the same or similar subject matter before other hearings, this should be disclosed, together with any publications the expert has authored in the fi eld.


T e judge also said that selected experts should refl ect an averagely skilled person or, as it may be, a skilled team, in the art. For a court to attach any weight to the evidence of an expert in patent matters, the expert should be typical of a skilled person in the art, with knowledge of, and preferably experience in, the relevant fi eld at the relevant date. In this case, Justice Arnold concluded that the experts relied on by Medimmune were not a skilled team and so could off er only limited assistance in relation to common general knowledge in the fi eld at the priority date. In contrast, Novartis’s expert was too skilled, leading the judge to view the expert’s evidence in the context that the expert was inventive, something that the hypothetical skilled person is not.


Ranbaxy (UK) Ltd v AstraZeneca AB


T is case considered the scope of second medical use claims. AstraZeneca’s patent claimed a magnesium salt of the proton pump inhibitor esomeprazole with a particular optical purity. T e patent also contained a Swiss form (second medical use) claim for the use of the magnesium salt in the manufacture of a medicament to inhibit gastric acid secretion. Ranbaxy’s product was manufactured by a process that began with the magnesium salt in question. However, another substance was added and this meant that the fi nal product did not contain any magnesium salt with the requisite optical purity.


AstraZeneca argued that, because Ranbaxy’s product was a direct product of a process in which magnesium esomeprazole, with the requisite optical


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purity, was used to manufacture a medicament, its patent was infringed. Ranbaxy countered that the patent claim required the fi nal product to contain magnesium esomeprazole of the specifi ed optical purity.


T e judge agreed with Ranbaxy, fi nding that a skilled person would believe the patent to be directed to the production of optically pure magnesium esomeprazole and its use in particular therapies. T e person would understand the patent claim’s teaching to be towards the use of this new compound for the manufacture of a medicament containing that compound.


T is claim construction appears to read a limitation in the claim that would not otherwise be present in a strict literal interpretation. T e claim specifi es only the use of esomeprazole salt for the manufacture of a medicament for a specifi c purpose; there is no limitation in the claim regarding the composition of the fi nal medicament. However, this judgment is not as controversial as it seems. It recognises that Swiss form claims do not provide wider protection than standard second medical use claims in the direct form of “use of X for the treatment of Y”. Broader protection should not be granted to an invention simply because a claim is framed in a Swiss form as opposed to a direct form.


Re Halliburton Energy Services Inc


In October 2011, Judge Colin Birss sat as a UK High Court of Justice (patents court) judge and provided a decision in this appeal from the UK Intellectual Property Offi ce (UKIPO). T e case concerned patentability exclusions in s1(2) of the UK Patents Act 1977. English courts have interpreted this section to mean that an invention has to make a “technical contribution” in order for it to be patentable. As a result, computer-implemented inventions (CIIs) have not been patentable because of the exclusion of “programs for a computer ... as such”.


Halliburton’s invention was a CII but it was found to be patentable. T e court held that, when the task that is carried out by a computer program is not within the categories that are excluded from patentability, it is likely that there is a technical contribution and the invention will be patentable.


World Intellectual Property Review e-Digest 2012 245


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