In UK

patent litigation Patent infringement is the commission of a prohibited act with respect to a patented invention without permission from the patent holder. Permission may typically be granted in the form of a license. The definition of patent infringement may va ...

, an Arrow declaration is a

declaration Declaration may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Declaration'' (book), a self-published electronic pamphlet by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri * ''The Declaration'' (novel), a 2008 children's novel by Gemma Malley Music ...

or order sought, for reasons of

legal certainty Legal certainty is a principle in national and international law which holds that the law must provide those subject to it with the ability to regulate their conduct. The legal system needs to permit those subject to the law to regulate their condu ...

, from a court that a product (or process) to be launched was old (i.e., not

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

) or obvious in patent law terms at a particular date, so that the product (or process) cannot be affected by (i.e., cannot infringe) any later granted patent, which would itself necessarily also either lack novelty or inventive step. The order is named after ''Arrow Generics Ltd. v Merck & Co Inc 007EWHC 1900 (Pat)'', in which it was originally suggested that this mechanism would be available as a declaratory relief. Such a declaration was granted for the first time in ''Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics Company Ltd v Abbvie Biotechnology Ltd 017EWHC 395 (Pat), Patents Court, England, 3 March 2017''. The defense is similar to a so-called "

Gillette defense This is a list of legal terms relating to patents. A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention, but a territorial right to exclude others from commercially exploiting the invention, granted to an inventor or his successor in rights i ...

", i.e. "the argument in infringement proceedings (...) that the defendant's product implements

prior art Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria f ...

technology, such that any patent which it infringes must be invalid."

See also

References

Further reading