Maxim Ali had assessed judicial prospects for priority patenting of “anticoronavirus” inventions

In April 2020, the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) launched a pilot programme to give priority to applications for “anti-coronavirus” inventions. Thus, Rospatent had already granted more than 300 such patents by September 2021. However, according to Maxim Ali, Partner and Head of IP/IT practice at Maxima Legal, this pandemic precedent could become a cause for litigation in the future.

“The main question is why Rospatent was able to expedite a large number of ‘anti-coronavirus’ applications. In an ideal situation, the applications must be processed faster due to the fact that all other applications had to wait in line longer. However, it is also possible that in pursuit of internal KPIs, there is indeed a risk that Rospatent has granted some patents without proper examination and this is a reason to challenge them,” the expert explained for Vestnik Phemidi Legal Magazine.

At the same time, Maxim stressed that challenging a patent is a normal situation. “But there are nuances. If an application was filed as a “tick-box” in order to fulfil the plan of R&D centre, for example. Then it may not be of interest to the other market players. It happens when a patent has narrow protection applying only to a specific technology which nobody except the right holder intended to use,” Maxim Ali added.

To read the full article (in Russian) please refer to No.1 Vestnik Phemidi Legal Magazine for September 2021