{"id":5314,"date":"2024-09-05T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T10:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forresters-staging.boldtype.website\/epos-u-turn-assessing-right-claim-priority\/"},"modified":"2024-09-27T13:32:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:32:17","slug":"epos-u-turn-assessing-right-claim-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forresters-staging.boldtype.website\/de\/epos-u-turn-assessing-right-claim-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"T 2360\/19 further confirms the EPO\u2019s U-turn regarding the standard for assessing the legal right to claim priority"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In our <a href=\"https:\/\/forresters-ip.com\/the-epo-relaxes-the-standard-for-assessing-the-legal-right-to-claim-priority\/\">previous article<\/a>, we outlined how the Enlarged Board of Appeal decisions G1\/22 and G\/22 indicated that the EPO was adopting a patentee-friendly approach to assessing the validity of the priority claim in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Historically, the EPO previously required&nbsp;all&nbsp;applicants named on a priority application, or their successors in title, to be named as applicants on the subsequent application claiming priority.&nbsp; This is known as the \u201call applicants approach\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">G1\/22 and G\/22 centred on the PCT joint applicant\u2019s approach where the applicants between the priority document and the PCT application were common for the US only.&nbsp; In this scenario, the Enlarged Board of Appeal confirmed that the EPO will now presume that the legal right to claim priority is valid, by way of an implicit agreement, unless the opponent can provide evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, there was some doubt about whether the same patentee-friendly approach would be applied to a priority claiming scenario where the applicants between the priority applicant and the priority claiming applicant are not in common for&nbsp;any&nbsp;state (not even the US).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The EPO\u2019s relaxed stance on priority for such a scenario has now been confirmed by the recently published Board of Appeal decision T 2360\/19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The patent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">T 2360\/19 relates to a key CRISPR patent (EP2784162) owned by the Broad Institute, MIT and the President and Fellow of Harvard College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">EP2784162 claimed priority to 12 US provisional applications \u2013 numbered as P1-P12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Marrafini was named as one of the applicants\/inventors on P1, P2, P5 and P11, but neither Dr Marrafini nor his successor in title (Rockefeller University) were named as an applicant on the subsequent priority claiming PCT application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During opposition, the opposition division found under the previous \u201call-applicants approach\u201d adopted by the EPO that the legal right to claim priority to P1, P2, P5 and P11 was therefore invalid because there was no evidence of the transfer of rights from Dr. Marrafini or Rockefeller University to the other co-applicants before the PCT filing date. Hence, the patent was found to lack novelty over intervening prior art published within the priority period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The decision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The patentee appealed the opposition division\u2019s decision. The appeal proceedings were stayed pending the outcome of G1\/22 and G\/22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the appeal proceeding, the opponents maintained their position that there was no evidence on file of an explicit or implicit transfer of priority rights between Dr. Marrafini or Rockefeller University to the other co-applicants and therefore the priority right to P1, P2, P5 and P11 was invalid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oral proceedings were held in March 2024 where the Opposition Division\u2019s decision to revoke the patent under novelty was set aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The written decision has just been published and confirms that the EPO will automatically consider the entitlement to claim priority to be valid, based on the concept of an implicit agreement on the transfer of the priority right from the priority applicant to the subsequent applicant, unless evidence is provided to the contrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this case, there was an inventorship dispute in the US regarding whether Dr. Marraffini should be named as an inventor of the PCT application from which EP2784162 is derived. This dispute was settled in 2018 following arbitration where the arbitrator decided that Dr. Marraffini should not be named as an inventor and Rockefeller University should not be named as an applicant of the PCT application.&nbsp; The settling of the inventorship dispute was considered by the Board of Appeal to be \u201c<em>an ex-post facto transfer agreement<\/em>.\u201d between Dr. Marrafini, Rockefeller University and the remaining applicants regarding the priority rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the Board stated that even if such settlement of an inventorship dispute did not exist, the legal right to claim priority would still be assumed to be valid because the opponents filed no evidence to rebut this presumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another important point is that the opponents provided evidence during the appeal proceedings to show that retroactive assignments of priority rights were not always operative under US law.&nbsp; However, the Board used G1\/22 and G2\/22 to confirm that a priority right and its transfer is a matter exclusively governed by the autonomous law of the EPC, and therefore they disregarded any application of US national law regarding retroactive assignments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The case will now be remitted back to the Opposition Division to discuss the remaining grounds of opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Practical implications<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This decision confirms that G1\/22 and G2\/22 significantly changed the interpretation of the law relating to priority, essentially reversing the burden of proof for challenging the legal right to claim priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The presumption of a validly claimed priority is confirmed to apply in any scenario where the applicants named on a priority application and a priority claiming application are not identical, even where a plurality of co-applicants named on a priority application only partly overlaps with the co-applicants named on the subsequent application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The decision reinforces the high burden on an opponent to challenge a priority claim \u2013 who must now provide evidence that an implicit or explicit transfer agreement does not exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This decision also confirms that retroactive transfer agreements concerning the priority rights will be accepted by the EPO, even if not valid under national law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our previous article, we outlined how the Enlarged Board of Appeal decisions G1\/22 and G\/22 indicated that the EPO was adopting a patentee-friendly approach to assessing the validity of the priority claim in Europe. Historically, the EPO previously required&nbsp;all&nbsp;applicants named on a priority application, or their successors in title, to be named as applicants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":3952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[344],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news-de"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>T 2360\/19 further confirms the EPO\u2019s U-turn regarding the standard for assessing the legal right to claim priority - Forresters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"T 2360\/19 further confirms the EPO\u2019s U-turn regarding the standard for assessing the legal right to claim priority - Forresters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In our previous article, we outlined how the Enlarged Board of Appeal decisions G1\/22 and G\/22 indicated that the EPO was adopting a patentee-friendly approach to assessing the validity of the priority claim in Europe. 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