Enforceability Before National Courts
The case law of the EPO Boards of Appeal is not binding on the EPO member states and different national courts acting on different cases may take a different view of patentability under Art. 52(2) EPC. Any European patent issued by the EPO may be revoked in a patent infringement lawsuit or revocation proceedings before a national court if for instance the court judges the invention as non-patentable in view of new prior art evidence or in view of a reconsideration of the available prior art.
Read more about this topic: Software Patents Under The European Patent Convention
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or courts:
“It is no part of the functions of the National Government to find employment for the people, and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for his purpose, we should only be taxing 40 millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.”
—James A. Garfield (1831–1881)
“Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of the courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)