From our friend and reader
Marc Nevant (French and European Patent Attorney, Cabinet Beau de Loménie, Paris) comes the following note, for which The SPC Blog offers its sincere thanks. Writes Marc:
I have recently come across Case T-140/12, a General Court of the European Union ruling in Teva v European Medicines Agency (EMA). In short, Teva sought an order to annul the EMA’s refusal to grant its application for marketing authorisation (MA) for imatinib Ratiopharm, a generic version of (Novartis's) orphan drug product imatinib (trade name Glivec), in so far as it concerned therapeutic indications for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML).
The matter is essentially about orphan drug exclusivity and the interpretation of Regulation 141/2000 on orphan medicinal products. There is, however, a parapraph in the decision that should be of interest for the readers of this blog. Paragraph 12 mentions that
“Pursuant to Article 8 of Regulation No 141/2000, the period of market exclusivity enjoyed by the medicinal product imatinib, marketed under the commercial name Glivec, in so far as concerns the CML therapeutic indications — the original marketing authorisation for which took effect on 12 November 2001 — expired on 12 November 2011”.
It turns out that 12 November 2001 is the date of notification of the MA (the grant date being 7 November 2001). This suggests that the determination of periods of Regulatory Exclusivity for centrally approved products could be affected by the “grant date v notification date” debate, and further suggests (if the decision is transposed to SPC cases) that, for centrally approved products, the date of notification of the MA is de facto the date referred to in §1 of Article 13 of SPC Regulation 469/2009, as already argued at length by Mike Snodin (see e.g. the post on this blog of 30 October 2014).
Let’s hope that the judges in Seattle Genetics (on which see earlier posts here and here) will share this view!
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