The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Levola could not claim exclusive rights to its spreadable cheese. The Dutch company was seeking copyright protection of its cheese spread after a competitor began selling a similar product. The court ruled that "the taste of a food product cannot be identified with precision and objectivity" and thust could not be eligible for copyright protection.
A court ruled that the LEPIN brand had copied the building blocks and miniature figures of Lego in China. The 4 defendants in the case were ordered to pay about 4.5 million yuan ($650,000) in damages. Lego has a reputation for aggressively defending its IP and has previously won 2 major IP cases in China - a trademark case and another copyright case.
In 2014, a California court awarded the Alfred E. Mann Foundation $131.2 million in damages from Cochlear for the infringement of 2 patents. Recently, a federal judge in California has doubled that award and ordered Cochlear to pay $268 million. Cochlear plans to appeal the judgement and expects the case to continue for an additional 2 years
The average cost of bringing a pharma asset to market was estimated by Deloitte in 2010 to be $1.18 billion. In 2017, Deloitte updated that estimate to nearly $2 billion. Patent protection is essential in allowing life sciences companies to recoup this massive investment that largely goes to cover R&D and the regulatory approval process.
The law surrounding patent eligibility became a chaotic mess around 2012-2014 with the Mayo v. Prometheus, AMP v. Myriad, and Alice v. CLS Bank decisions. Because of these decisions and the resulting blur of eligibility, the most exciting scientific discoveries, technological advances and innovations of the twenty-first century are no longer patent eligible in America.
