In this blog, we reported earlier about a new nullity action initiated in 2010 against the German supplementary protection certificate (SPC) for enantiomeric escitalopram and the judgment of the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht – BPatG) in favor of the validity of the SPC. Meanwhile, the BPatG issued the written grounds for its decision.

After the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) had confirmed the validity of the German SPC for the enantiomeric escitalopram (and its underlying patent) in 2009, the Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) now confirmed in further nullity proceedings the validity of the SPC.

One of the new question marks introduced by Directive 2004/48 (the so-called “Enforcement Directive”) is what amount of indicia is required to prove that an act of infringement is “imminent” for the purposes of obtaining a preliminary injunction aimed at prohibiting such act. Although the declared goal of the Enforcement Directive was to strengthen the…