This article considers the appropriate method for assessing substantive principles of European patent law, including limits on European patentability. In the argument made, European patent law is a crowded house in which “substantive convergence” around principles is inevitable but...

The vast majority of inventions are devised by employees, raising the question who is entitled to patent them? Under the UK Patents Act 1977, the right to patent an invention lies primarily with its inventor(s). However, an exception exists for employee inventions to which section 39(1) applies....

This is a case note of the US Supreme Court's decision in Assoc’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc 569 US (2013) that isolated DNA sequences are inherently unpatentable, in contrast to complementary DNA (cDNA) sequences, which the Court affirmed as inherently patentable subject...

In December 2012 the European Parliament supported the creation of a European patent with unitary effect. For the next year at least, the international patent community will be on the edge of its proverbial seat, waiting to see whether the proposal becomes a reality. If it does, it will be a...

In a paper recently published in the IIC, I argued against the prevailing construction of article 52(2) of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents as resolving to a single requirement for technical character. That argument was based in part on a challenge to contemporary assumptions...