On 24 November 2011 the CJEU passed judgment in the cases C-322/10 (Medeva) and C-422/10 (Georgetown). In the Medeva judgment, the Court answers six questions put to it by the UK Court of Appeal and the High Court respectively. The facts are deemed known by the reader – they can be conveniently reduced to: A…

As already explained in a previous post, the company governed by the laws of Switzerland, Novartis AG, is the holder of patent EP 0 443 983 entitled “Acyl compounds”, whose subject-matter is a group of antihypertensive compounds, including valsartan, pharmaceutical preparations containing them and processes for the preparation of these compounds. This patent, filed on 12 February 1991, was to…

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…

On 11 November 2011 the IP Chamber of the Court of Rome granted the motion for preliminary injunction requested by Novartis AG and Novartis Farma S.p.A. against Mylan S.p.A. on the basis of Novartis’ Italian valsartan and hydrochlorothiazide SPC, the active ingredients in Novartis’ Co-Diovan medicinal product (which is marketed in Italy as Co-Tareg). The…

A supplementary protection certificate SPC granted for an enantiomer (escitalopram) cannot be declared void because a prior SPC was granted for the racemate (citalopram) when both the racemate and the enantiomer are protected by individual patents and thus are different products. This must be so because otherwise the enantiomer patent would be invalid for lack…

The Federal Institute of Intellectual Property can also issue a supplementary protection certificate to an applicant if a certificate for the same active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) or combination thereof has already been granted to a third person. By interpreting the law in that way – only restricting the grant of a certificate for the same…

In this blog, we reported earlier about a new nullity action initiated in 2010 against the German supplementary protection certificate (SPC) for enantiomeric escitalopram and the judgment of the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht – BPatG) in favor of the validity of the SPC. Meanwhile, the BPatG issued the written grounds for its decision.

If a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) should have been denied (or granted with limited scope), because the six month application period following the date of first marketing approval has lapsed, it is entirely or partially void. There is a lack of legal interest for a negative declaratory action directed at declaring the non-existence of claims…