The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched a database in September 2020 that allows free-of-charge access to leading judicial court decisions related to IP law. The participating countries are Australia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, the Republic of Korea and Spain. Unfortunately, some important jurisdictions -  the EU, US, JP, CN and IN - are not included.

 

Read more on this news on the WIPO website: WIPO launches database of judicial decisions on intellectual property

 

You can view the database itself here: WIPO Lex

 

An example of using the database is the judgement in Mylan Health Pty v Sun Pharma ANZ Pty Ltd of the Federal Court of Australia, see WIPO Lex regarding e.g. a patent claiming the “use of fenofibrate or a derivative thereof for the manufacture of the medicament for the prevention and/or treatment of retinopathy”. Here the Australian Appeal Court confirmed that three Mylan Lipidil patents are invalid. See Australian appeal court confirms that three Mylan Lipidil patents are invalid - Lexology. Here the court found that a protocol for a clinical trial mentioning an unproven hypothesis anticipated this claim.

 

While the WIPO database is primarily useful for patent lawyers, it may also help inform patent managers in companies and other persons interested in comparison of various intellectual property related jurisdictions. This is especially in case a specific issue is of interest in one of the mentioned countries.

 

At its launch, the database comprised 400 decisions from 10 countries. As of 13 January 2021, 47,000 legal documents can be accessed.

 

WIPO states: “WIPO Lex-Judgments provides access to judicial decisions that have been selected directly by the courts or other national authorities of each member state as leading decisions due to their significant impact or precedential value. The database captures searchable, bibliographic details for all indexed judgments, which include subject matter, issuing authority, type of proceeding, relevant legislation, keyword and summary, as well as the full text of the judgment in its original language. As it is integrated with WIPO Lex, WIPO Lex-Judgments also enables cross-references to national laws and international treaties referenced in the decision, as contained in WIPO Lex.”

 

The database is available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish and includes automatic machine translation tools. 

 

Please contact our attorneys for more information on the topics raised above: Contact Us 

 

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