The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a prior art to be an anticipation must bear within its four corners adequate directions for the practice of the patent. If the earlier disclosure offers no more than a starting point for further experiments, if its teaching will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, if it does not inform the art without more how to practice the new invention, it has not correspondingly enriched the store of common knowledge, and it is not an anticipation.

In this case, the European Patent Office Boards of Appeal decided on the patentability of a class of compounds defined by parameters within numerical ranges. It denied the grant of a patent, finding that the invention lacked novelty and an inventive step.

In this case, the Supreme Court of Appeals interpreted the claims of a pharmaceutical divisional patent and examined its novelty and inventive step. The Court also provided guidance on the admissibility of divisional patents under South African law.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) of a number of product-by-process claims based on the lack of novelty of the claimed product. Patentability of product-by-process claims is determined on the basis of the product, not the process.

The Court of the Commissioner of Patents in this decision focused on two main issues: (1) the protection of new medical uses of known products under South African patent law and (2) the requirements for prior art to destroy novelty by anticipation.

In this decision the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the generic paroxetine hydrochloride anhydrate product which Apotex Corp., Apotex Inc., and TorPharm, Inc. (hereinafter collectively: Apotex) intended to produce would infringe upon claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 4,721,723 held by SmithKline Beecham Corporation. However, it found claim 1 to be invalid as anticipated under 35 U.S.C. §102(b) (exceptions to novelty).

On 1 April 2013, the Supreme Court of India confirmed the rejection by the Indian Patent Office of a patent application filed by Swiss drug maker Novartis on the anti-cancer medicament “Glivec”. The Supreme Court considered that Glivec did not qualify as a patentable “invention” under Section 3 (d) of the Indian Patents Act.

In this case, the Australian Federal Court addressed the patentability of methods of treatment of the human body, how novelty can be destroyed and what amounts to secondary infringement.