The Court of Justice: who needs it? A new article

New has reached The SPC Blog of the latest publication by Mike Snodin of Park Grove IP (a copy of which can be viewed here). On this occasion, Mike’s article (“The CJEU – for supplementary protection certificates, who needs it?”) discusses the arguments for and against the use of Notification Date for “centralised” marketing authorisations (MAs) and explains why the arguments against, as typified by a decision of the Danish Patent Office, are fatally flawed.

Mike concludes that it is acte clair that the SPC legislation requires the use of the date of validity of a MA to calculate the duration of an SPC. How the date of validity is calculated will depend upon the type of MA involved – but for “centralised” MAs it will involve use of the Notification Date.

In the light of his analysis of the legislation, Mike concludes that it is not necessary for patent offices to refer this matter to the CJEU in order to accept arguments in favour of the use of the Notification Date.  Mike’s article was published too late to persuade the Oberlandesgericht Wien not to make a reference on this point. However, Mike hopes that his article will help the CJEU quickly grasp the key points of the matter. He also hopes that they will forgive the title that the publishers chose for his article!