Even in the dog days of summer, the European courts continue to turn out rulings in major patent disputes – some of them landmark decisions. In the high-profile battle over blockbuster Xarelto, the Dutch Court of Appeal has revoked Bayer’s dosage patent for lack of inventive step, overturning the District Court’s ruling and aligning the Netherlands with earlier revocation decisions in other countries. Central to the ruling was a patient information form from Bayer's own Phase II Einstein-DVT study, which the court considered publicly available prior art in the absence of any express confidentiality agreement.

This is not the only win for generics manufacturers recently. The EPO Boards of Appeal have revoked a BMS patent covering cancer drug Opdivo. Many manufacturers such as Sandoz and Amgen already have biosimilars in the pipeline. In another pharma case from the Netherlands, the District Court The Hague has blocked a wholesale pharmacy from distributing nasal spray containing semaglutide.

Elsewhere, the UK Supreme Court has allowed Tesla’s appeal in the dispute over the terms of a licence to SEPs on the Avanci 5G platform. The ruling marks the first time a court outside China has confirmed jurisdiction to set a FRAND rate for a global patent pool licence.

And in another major victory for collecting society GEMA, Munich Regional Court has ordered US AI provider Suno to cease training its music-generation model on GEMA-protected works, rejecting both the text-and-data-mining exception under German law and the US fair-use defence.

These are just a few of the interesting rulings that courts from Germany, the Netherlands, and the UPC have handed down in recent days.