A niche blog dedicated to the issues that arise when supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) extend patents beyond their normal life -- and to the respective positions of patent owners, investors, competitors and consumers. The blog also addresses wider issues that may be of interest or use to those involved in the extension of patent rights. You can email The SPC Blog here

Thursday 31 July 2008

Non-standard abbreviations used in SPCs -- a new list

This month the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) published some new QRD documents updates. These included a List of frequently used non-standard abbreviations to be used in SPC and labelling. This is version 9 of the original list: it runs for three pages and contains around 30 terms and their non-standard abbreviations in 23 languages. There are warnings that some terms have abbreviations in some languages only, while in others the full term must be used (eg there is no Portuguese abbreviation for "percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty". The notice contains no indication as to the list's legal status.

STOP PRESS: it now seems that the "SPCs" mentioned here are themselves a non-standard abbreviation for "Summaries of Product Characteristics", referred to as SmPCs by those who like to distinguish them from supplemtary-protection-certificate-type SPCs . Thanks, Trevor Cook (Bird & Bird) for pointing this out.

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