Where the pattern of the research programme which the notional skilled person would undertake can clearly be foreseen, it may be legitimate to take a step by step analysis. Floyd J said: ‘I think that the guiding principle must be that one has to look at each putative step which the skilled person is required to take and decide whether it was obvious. Even then one has to step back and ask an overall question as to whether the step by step analysis, performed after the event, may not in fact prove to be unrealistic or driven by hindsight.’
Floyd J
[2011] EWHC 583 (Pat)
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Actavis Group Ptc EHF and Others v Icos Corporation and Another SC 27-Mar-2019
The court considered: ‘the application of the test of obviousness under section 3 of the Patents Act 1977 to a dosage patent. In summary, a patent, whose validity is not challenged, identified a compound as an efficacious treatment but did not . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 23 January 2022; Ref: scu.430656
