Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Antonios Baris (Book Review Editor), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / Jeremy Phillips / ECJ treats of the week

ECJ treats of the week

-

ECJ treats of the week

Right: interpreting TRIPs Article 33 - is it just a piece of cake?

Tomorrow morning Advocate General Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer treats the Grand Chamber of the ECJ to the benefit of his Opinion in a case that the IPKat didn't see coming: Case C-431/05 Merck Genéricos Produtos Farmacêuticos. This case, on a reference from what the IPKat thinks is probably Portugal since the language of the case is Portuguese, asks just two short questions:
"Does the Court of Justice of the European Communities have jurisdiction to interpret Article 33 of the TRIPs Agreement?

In the event of an affirmative answer to the first question, must national courts apply that Article, on their own initiative or at the request of a party, in proceedings pending before them?".
Article 33 of TRIPs reads as follows:
"Term of Protection

The term of protection available [for a patent] shall not end before the expiration of a period of twenty years counted from the filing date".
The IPKat's curiosity is stimulated by this. The provisions doesn't look like the sort of thing to give a judge a headache, so he suspects something sinister lurking beneath the surface. Indeed, echoes Merpel, it must be something quite Merck-y ...

Reminder: on Thursday 25 January, as previously noted on this blog (see A Tale of Three Thursdays, here), judgment is expected in Cases C-48/05 Adam Opel and C-321/03 Dyson.
ECJ treats of the week ECJ treats of the week Reviewed by Jeremy on Monday, January 22, 2007 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 24 January 2007 at 12:38:00 GMT

    Very convoluted legal reasoning trying decide between clearly divergent ECJ jurisprudence on direct effect of TRIPS. The issue here was whether when Portugal and the EU acceded to TRIPs the previous 15-year term of patents was automatically extended to 20 years, as req'd by Art 33 TRIPs. The A-G opines that TRIPs is NOT of direct effect and specific national legislation is required to implement its terms.
    As a consequence a Portuguese generic pharma co 'got away with it', because it started making its copy drug after the 15-yr term of the patent protecting the drug had expired (but before 20 years were up) and so cannot be sued.
    Tibor

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.