The topic of chemical and biological patents is of special importance in
European and German patent law. The highly technical nature of patents
in this area gives rise to special problems for patent lawyers in
understanding, for instance, structural alterations like polymorphism
and enantiomerism, which lead to a derivative of a substance that is
comprised in the prior art. It is a legal question whether and under
what circumstances such alterations are treated as novel, and in which
cases they are part of the state of the art. Even if a substance is
prior art, a new medical use can be patented. Dealing with natural
occurrences of a substance is also a problem for patent law, as is the
difficulty of understanding how different identifications of a substance
and the resulting patents interrelate with each other. This book
provides an expert overview of all these questions.
Past decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concerning
broccoli and tomato patents, as well as embryonic stem cells, have
highlighted the importance of this field of law. Most of the proceedings
regarding chemical and biological patents have been held in German
courts, and the German jurisprudence has often been the basis for ECJ
decisions. Thus, German case law is used to illustrate the commentary.
