The patent at issue was granted to Angiotech Pharmaceuticals by the European Patent Office (EPO) on June 25, 1997. At the EPO, five different companies opposed the patent. Both the UK trial court and the UK Court of Appeal decided that the patent was invalid in view of several publications.
Within the same time frame several courts in the Netherlands, following the approach of the EPO and concluded that Angiotech’s claimed invention was inventive and not obvious in view of the same publications. Angiotech appealed the UK lower court decisions to the House of Lords seeking to resolve these inconsistent outcomes.
In his lead opinion upholding the validity of Angiotech’s patent, Lord Hoffmann did not agree with the reasoning that the UK lower courts used in justifying revocation and instead agreed with the opinion of the Dutch Court. The House of Lords’s unanimous decision is said to reflect an important development in bringing uniformity to the interpretation of the European Patent Convention among the national courts of Europe and the European Patent Office.
Bill Hunter, president and CEO of Angiotech, said: “We are pleased that the House of Lords entered final judgment in Angiotech’s favor and view this outcome as further proof of the continued strength of our paclitaxel stent patent portfolio throughout the world.”