FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

NutraSweet Australia Pty Ltd v Ajinomoto Co., Inc. [2005] FCA 1524

CORRIGENDUM

NUTRASWEET AUSTRALIA PTY LTD v AJINOMOTO CO., INC.

VID 174 of 2002

FINKELSTEIN J

28 OCTOBER 2005 (CORRIGENDUM 22 NOVEMBER 2005)

MELBOURNE

CORRIGENDUM

1.      At para 36, following the quote from the Report of the Industrial Property Advisory Committee, delete from the next line commencing “The change was made …” through to and including the excerpt from the Act (ending “in that paragraph.”) and replace with the following:

The change was made by s 7 of the 1990 Act.  Relevantly, s 7 (as at the priority date) provided:

“(2)      For the purposes of this Act, an invention is to be taken to involve an inventive step when compared with the prior art base unless the invention would have been obvious to a person skilled in the relevant art in the light of the common general knowledge as it existed in the patent area before the priority date of the relevant claim, whether that knowledge is considered separately or together with either of the kinds of information mentioned in subsection (3), each of which must be considered separately.

(3)               For the purposes of subsection (2), the kinds of information are:

(a)                prior art information made publicly available in a single document or through doing a single act; and

(b)               prior art information made publicly available in 2 or more related documents, or through doing 2 or more related acts, if the relationship between the documents or acts is such that a person skilled in the relevant art in the patent area would treat them as a single source of that information;

being information that the skilled person mentioned in subsection (2) could, before the priority date of the relevant claim, be reasonably expected to have ascertained, understood and regarded as relevant to work in the relevant art in the patent area.”

Associate:

Dated:              22 November 2005