EU court prepares to tackle legal wrangles over SPCs
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Europe's supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) have proved a useful way of extending effective patent life for pharmaceutical products, but as with many other forms of intellectual property protection, uncertainties in the legislation have given rise to many legal disputes. Unfortunately progress in clarifying the situation has been slow, and several cases are still pending before the national and European courts.