Court of Appeal can overrule itself

Actavis UK Ltd v Merck and Co Inc CA TLR 5 June

The case concerned ‘Swiss forms’, these being patent claims reliant upon the identification of a second medical use of an existing pharmaceutical substance. Their novelty depended on a new treatment by a different dosage regime or method of administration. Such claims were treated as novel in the European Patent Office, Germany and New Zealand, and the domestic courts would normally follow such settled jurisprudence.