At 10.15am this coming Wednesday (2 September 2015) the Australian High Court will hand down its decision in the appeal by AstraZeneca AB against last year’s ruling, by a a special five-judge panel of the Federal Court of Australia, that its two patents relating to the cholesterol-lowering drug marketed as CRESTOR (having the active ingredient rosuvastatin) are invalid.The decision will be significant in clarifying the law relating to obviousness in Australia. There are potentially two questions at stake in this regard:What is the appropriate ‘starting point’ for assessing whether or not a claimed invention is obvious? Does the Australian law limit or prohibit ‘selection’ of a favourable prior art document from a potentially large field of candidates as a basis for finding an invention obvious? We will soon know what the High Court thinks on these two questions. This article provides a background on the issues before the court, and some…
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