The most recent issue of the Bio-Science Law Review (BSLR, published six times a year by Lawtext Publishing) carries a short note by Taylor Wessing Associate Catherine Drew. This note, "Patents -- SPC Regulations", discusses the recent decision of the UK IPO in Merck & Co. Inc, BL O/108/08, on whether a SPC can have a negative or zero term.Details of the BSLR here, and of Lawtext here.
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The UKIPO decision could be described as the result of the first battle in what looks like being a reasonably long war on how the effect of the 6-month SPC term extension (due to conducting trials in the paediatric population) is calculated.
The opening salvo was fired in a Snodin and Miles article published in the July 2007 edition of Regulatory Affairs Journal, Pharma (Vol. 18, No. 7, pp. 459-463). The UKIPO decision is discussed in the June 2008 edition of the same journal (Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 387-388).
We await with bated breath to see what the various national and regional patent offices (and, possibly, the ECJ) make of the issue!
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