The Supreme Administrative Court –overruled the Patent Office (PO) denying AstraZeneca’s application for a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), because the PO should have applied § 77(2) – instead of §79 – of the Transitional and Closing Provisions of the Act amending the Bulgarian Patents Act, which does not contains any requirements relating to the product’s date of the first marketing authorization. Furthermore, it rejected the PO’s request for a referral to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling, because the dispute solely concerned national procedural provisions and no community provision was to apply.
Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com.
________________________
To make sure you do not miss out on regular updates from the Kluwer Patent Blog, please subscribe here.