Xalatan, an eye care drug, will also weigh on growth as European patent expired in January 2012.
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To make matters worse, the European Patent Office has filed a brief, also stating that the patent is invalid.
The recent improvement also adds some Euro flavor to Google's patent search by including submissions to the European Patent Office.
ENGADGET: Google Patents search gets upgrade, now filled with prior art and European patent goodness
Evidence suggests that a unified European patent and litigation procedure, a longstanding wish of innovative companies, would give generics a boost.
Worse, this could bode badly for a European patent on Fosamax, which was prescribed 22-million times last year to prevent fragile bones.
Mr Alton noted that the European Patent Office had refused to allow the equivalent patent because "it was found to be obvious".
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Seeing the potential, he cleverly secured a two-year exclusive European patent on the zipper, which came to be known as the Hermes Fastener.
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Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor said forthcoming legislation on a European patent system, and on further cuts to mobile roaming charges could go some way to boosting the economy.
Less innovative countries are unlikely to back a strong European patent, since their governments fear that companies which rely on imitation would lose market share to more inventive foreigners.
The king's charisma, intelligence, talents (from playing the saxophone to rain-making, a science in which he holds a European patent) and deep concern for his people's welfare make him adored at home and admired around the world.
It says the European Patent Office (EPO) has shown itself willing to grant thousands of software patents - and worries the EU could end up with a system in which appeals against such judgements are decided according to the EPO's own rules.
Europe's patent system is also in a mess in another regard: the quilt of national patent offices and languages means that the cost of obtaining a patent for the entire European Union is too high, a burden in particular on smaller firms and individual inventors.
The addition should work well with an update to Google Translate earlier this year that added parallel patent texts from the aforementioned European agency to allow for translations between English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Swedish.
ENGADGET: Google Patents search gets upgrade, now filled with prior art and European patent goodness
An additional concern is that Congress in recent years has completely restructured the U.S. patent system to harmonize it with European and Japanese practice.
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Overall, according to the European Commission, the lack of a unified patent system is one reason why Europe's small and medium-sized technology firms fail to grow as quickly as those in America, Asia and elsewhere.
The European Parliament approved on first reading a law that would harmonise national patent legislation on genetic engineering , and would allow continent-wide patents for genetic inventions.
Analyzing the inventor location of patents filed in the three major patent exchanges in the world, the United States, European Union, and Japan, we found that the United States is the global leader in clean energy patents filed since 1990.
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The European Commission charged Samsung Electronics on Friday with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
FORBES: Links 23 Dec: Apple Fined Again, Samsung Could Be Fined $15 Billion
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