Interface between obviousness and insufficiency restated (Connor v Angiotech [2008] UKHL 49)

In an opinion released yesterday the House of Lords brought more certainty to the test applied to patents to determine inventive step.  This is good news to litigants who feared that the test for obviousness in the UK was in some way linked to the extent of the technical disclosure of the patent and, as a result, becoming fraught with uncertainty. Following the judgment of the Court of Appeal it seemed likely parties contesting patent litigation would invariably arrive at different formulations of the invention of the patent in suit and focus their expert evidence accordingly, a situation that would likely be unhelpful to the Court.

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