Negative term SPCs: judgment now available

Further to today's earlier post, here is the judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-125/10 Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp v Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt.  It is surprisingly short, being just 46 paragraphs in length.  The active part of the decision reads as follows:

Article 13 of Council Regulation (EEC) No 1768/92 of 18 June 1992 concerning the creation of a supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products, as amended by Regulation (EC) No 1901/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006, read in conjunction with Article 36 of Regulation No 1901/2006, must be interpreted as meaning that medicinal products can be the object of the grant of a supplementary protection certificate where the period that has elapsed between the date of lodging the basic patent application and the first marketing authorisation in the European Union is less than five years. In such a case, the period of the paediatric extension provided for by the latter regulation starts to run from the date determined by deducting from the patent expiry date the difference between five years and the duration of the period which elapsed between the lodging of the patent application and the grant of the first marketing authorisation.