The end of 2013 saw a flurry of legal activity on Supplementary
Protection Certificates (SPCs) with the issuance of three further
decisions from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU),
the highest appeal court in the EU. As ever, the decisions raise
some issues that are likely to result in further references to the
CJEU, but they do settle some significant points.
Some recent CJEU cases had cast doubt on the general question of
whether one basic patent could form the basis for more than one
SPC. In case C-484/12 Georgetown University v Octrooicentrum
Nederland (the Dutch Patent Office), the CJEU ruled that it is
possible for more than one SPC to be based on a single patent.
There remains the requirement that each of the SPCs must protect a
different product and that each SPC must be directed to a product
protected by the basic patent and contained in a medicinal product
that is the subject of a marketing authorisation (MA). Georgetown
University has already
