On 2 June 2009, the Netherlands Patent Office granted the extension to the SPC for Losartan (while being fully aware of the recent UK Patent Court Decision). You can access the decision here. The decision can be summarized as follows:
"First of all Dupont introduced into the Dutch proceedings two key pieces of evidence: A compliance statement from by the Dutch Medicinal Evaluation Board which forms part of the market authorization dated 16th April 2009 and a so-called end-of-procedure notification also from the Dutch Medicinal Evaluation Board, acting as Reference Member State, dated 6th April 2009 which positively concludes the Mutual Recognition Procedure and instructs all Member States to vary the market authorisation within 30 days. This material apparently was not brought forward in the proceedings before the Patents Court.
Secondly we disagree for several reasons with the opinion of the English judge that article 10.3 cannot in all cases be used to put the application in order. Therefore we accepted the aforementioned pieces introduced after the filing date and within the period that was set under article 10.3 in our first communication to the applicant."
Thanks to Martijn de Lange from the Netherlands Patent Office informing us on this decision.
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