Australia fine-tunes non-infringement declarations

All the way from Australia comes some news from Baker & McKenzie of the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2011, which covers a range of IP areas. This Act, which came into force on 16 April, makes provision for a number of legislative reforms that don't take effect until 15 April 2013. One such reform will interest PatLit readers since it deals with how declarations of non-infringement are pleaded. According to our source:

"The statutory reference to a person who wishes to "exploit the invention" will be replaced with a person who "has done, is doing, or is intending to do an act". This means that a person seeking a declaration will need not have sought or been granted a patent themselves in order to make use of the provision, and clarifies that a declaration can apply to a present, current or future act. An applicant for a non-infringement declaration will also be able to challenge the validity of a patent in the same proceedings".