An authorisation procedure is required for medicinal products or plant protection products, so that the holder of a patent concerning the medicinal product or plant protection product can usually only commercially exploit part of the twenty-year patent term. To compensate for this, EU regulations have introduced the supplementary protection certificate ("SPC", "ESZ"). The SPC allows the protection of a medicinal product or plant protection product to be extended beyond the twenty-year term of the patent. This brochure provides a further overview of the SPC.
