The topic of chemical and biological patents is of special importance in European and German patent law. The highly technical nature of patents in this area gives rise to special problems for patent lawyers in understanding, for instance, structural alterations like polymorphism and enantiomerism, which lead to a derivative of a substance that is comprised in the prior 'art.' It is a legal question whether, and under what circumstances, such alterations are to be treated as novel, and in which cases they are part of the state of the art. Even if a substance is prior art, a new medical use of...

The Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) prolongs the term of patents for pharmaceutical products for a maximum of five additional years. The legal bases are two European SPC Regulations, and the SPC is based upon European or national patents. SPCs protect some of the most valuable products in the pharmaceutical industry, where each day of additional protection may be worth millions of euros. Despite the economic relevance SPCs have obtained in recent years, there exists only limited detailed literature on the subject. German jurisprudence on SPCs is of special importance, as this has...