In hiring Mirandah Law to advise on patent litigation suits, clients can take solace in the fact that they are relying on a firm with long-standing high success rates in contentious IP matters. Below is a list of recent matters in which we have prevailed at the High Court and Registry level.

Patent Litigation

Rectification of the Register

Mirandah Law recently prevailed in the ground-breaking Singapore High Court case Novartis (Singapore) Pte Ltd v Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Co [2017] SGHC 322  which addressed certain key procedural issues in rectification of the Patents Register for the first time in Singapore jurisprudence.

Ruling in our client’s favour, the Court allowed our application to reverse corrections made to the Patents Register by the Defendant. The Court ruled the defendant should not be permitted to seek correction under Rule 58 of the Singapore Patent Rules of an error made in an earlier application in respect of a granted Singapore patent.

Instead, in accordance with our submissions, the Court ruled that the proper procedure for correction of earlier errors made in application for granted Singapore patents is through Rule 91 and Section 107 of the Singapore Patents Act.

Furthermore, following earlier decisions of the European Patent Office, the Court ruled that even if the Defendant had followed the correct procedure, its application for correction would have been rejected due to too much time having elapsed since the error, and a lack of ‘exceptional’ reasons for correction.

‘The Pregabalin Case’

In the 2017 landmark case of Warner-Lambert Company LLC v Novartis (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2017] SGCA 45 before the Singapore Court of Appeal, mirandah law was successful in arguing that the amendment of a patent, post-grant, from a ‘method of treatment’ to a ‘Swiss-style’ claim, extends the scope of said patent and thus is an unlawful amendment under the Singapore Patents Act. This upheld the earlier decision of the Singapore High Court which had also been in our client’s favour. Our successful litigation has led the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) to review its practices relating to post-grant amendments and second medical use claims.

Lonza v Genpharm

In the case of Lonza Biologics Tuas Pte Ltd v Genpharm International Inc before IPOS, we were victorious in revoking a patent held by the proprietor (Genpharm) on behalf of our client Lonza. We successfully argued that the patent concerned lacked inventiveness, and therefore the adjudicator ruled that the proprietor must amend the claims in their patent specification – allowing our client to proceed with its product development services in Singapore without fear of infringing the patent.

Revocations

We have experienced extensive success in winning cases on behalf of our clients where patent revocation actions have been brought before the national Registry. 

In one famous recent example, we advised petrochemicals giant UOP in submitting 11 simultaneous revocation actions against the patents of its competitor ExxonMobil. The various matters were composed of method, process and product claims. The parties were to settle in our client's favour - the outcome being a major boon to their ability to sell certain products in Singapore.