Changes to UK Manual of Patent Practice

The UK-IPO have just announced an array of changes (detailed here) to the UK Manual of Patent Practice, which take effect as from today (1 October).  

As all patent professionals know, the Manual is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to find out how to deal with the UK Office, as well as being very useful for trainee attorneys in passing those pesky UK patent attorney exams (and much more readable than the Black Book).  It has been revised to take into account, among other things, recent case law including the House of Lords judgment in Angiotech (IPKat commentary here) and the Patents Court judgments in Eli Lilly & Co. v Human Genome Sciences, Inc. (IPKat commentary here), Matsushita Electric (sadly not freely available online, but with IPKat commentary here), Re Council Regulation (EEC) No 1768/92 (aka Gilead Sciences, commented on the SPC blog here), and the recent (but far from final) chapter in the saga of Zipher v Markem (IPKat commentary here).

All of these cases are essential reading for those wishing to be kept up to date with patent-related matters in the UK.  Regular IPKat readers will, of course, already be familiar with them, and should need no further prompting.  It is very gratifying, however, to see the UK-IPO acting promptly in updating their practice so we don't forget about them.