Legal and regulatory update

Abstract

The year 2004 saw the end game of what was probably the largest and most significant patent infringement case in the English Courts of the past 10 years. Bird & Bird acted for TKT throughout. Kirin-Amgen and Transkaryotic Therapies Inc. (TKT) crossed swords for the final time in the House of Lords during an eight day appeal hearing in July 2004. The case is significant for the number of patent law issues at stake: novelty of product-by-process claims, three types of pleaded insufficiency, and most importantly the issues of purposive construction and infringement under the Protocol to Article 69 of the European Patent Convention. This section focuses mainly on the first and last of these issues. Indeed, the TKT case is actually the first case dealing with 'protocol infringement' to reach the House of Lords under the 1977 Patents Act. The appellate committee comprised Lords Hoffmann, Hope, Rodger, Walker and Brown.