Baldwin's Rules Explained

After posting a piece on the recent Escilatopram case in the Netherlands (Tiefenbacher et al. v Lundbeck), the SPC Blog received the following comments by Jaap Bremer of BarentsKrans N.V., who along with Marleen van den Horst represented A.E. Tiefenbacher GmbH and Centrafarm B.V., two of the claimants in the case:

"The Dutch Court clearly distinguished its judgment from the UK decision and the distinction was justified by new experimental evidence as well as expert evidence provided by Tiefenbacher. The expert evidence was actually very interesting. In the UK case, Kitchin J heavily relied on the interpretation by Prof Davies, Head of Chemistry at Oxford University, of certain organic chemistry rules called the "Baldwin Rules", which were created by Davies predecessor at Oxford, Prof. Baldwin. In the Dutch proceedings, Tiefenbacher managed to have Prof Baldwin act as a expert witness to explain his own rules. He had not been involved in the UK proceedings. This lead to a very interesting confrontation in the Courtroom between the current Oxford Chemistry Professor and his predecessor. The explanation of the Baldwin Rules by Sir Baldwin himself (to set straight what went astray in the UK) was a very important factor in getting the Dutch Court to distinguish the case from Kitchin J's decision. "

You can get a summary of the case in English here. Read the Dutch decision here.