Case law

Evergreening: Strategies for effectively extending patent protection

The term of European patents is clearly defined in Art. 63 EPC:  "The term of the European patent shall be 20 years from the date of filing of the application." However, a patent only develops its protective effect from the date of grant and not from the filing date. This leads to a considerably shortened period of protection.

In the first issue of this year's life sciences magazine BIOspectrum, our partners Dr. Erich Fritsche and Dr. Mathias Ricker discuss in this context strategies for effective renewal of patents. You can download the text of the article, which is in German, here.

BIO Spectrum is the publication medium of the (German) Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie, GBM), the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (Vereinigung für Allgemeine und Angewandte Mikrobiologie, VAAM), the Genetics Society (Gesellschaft für Genetik, GfG) and the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Experimentelle und Klinische Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, DGPT). Every two months, the magazine gives around 15,000 readers an overview of new developments in the life sciences (with a focus on molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics and developmental biology) and provides information on current affairs from business and politics. (according to scientific publishing house Springer)