Lithuania Grants Extra Protection for Medicine & Plant Protection Patents

Starting from January 1, 2002 amendments to Lithuanian Patent law, which are adopted following EC Regulations No 1768/921 and No 1610/962, have come into force. New provision of law creates the possibility for the owners of the patents on pharmaceutical and plant protection products to receive supplementary protection certificates granting extended protection for up to additional five years to the patents. All the procedure and requirements for the applications for supplementary protection certificates are set in the Regulation PA/01/2001 of Lithuanian State Patent Bureau. The Regulation closely follows mentioned EC Regulations, which it implements.

A supplementary protection certificate may be granted to a patent owner or his successor in title for a period not exceeding five years, if legal protection is conferred to:

1) active ingredients of a medicine;

2) active substances of a plant protection product.

Following Regulation PA/01/2001, which provides for the definitions, "medicine" and "plant protection product" should be understood similarly as in corresponding EC Regulations. But the definition of the "patent" on the basis of which supplementary protection may be granted is narrower than the one in said EC Regulations. Following Lithuanian rules "patent" is valid in the Republic of Lithuania patent, which grants protection for active ingredients of a medicine or plant protection product, while EC Regulations define "patent" as a patent which protects medicinal or plant protection products as such, a process to obtain those products or an application of the products. Thus the scope of the protection following both instruments, i.e. national Lithuanian laws and EC Regulations is different. In Lithuania supplementary protection certificate may be granted only for patented active substance of medicine or plant protection product within the limits of basic patent, which may not include process to obtain or application of the product.

Supplementary protection certificate is granted upon the application to Lithuanian State Patent Bureau. Foreign applicants may file an application only through licensed patent attorneys of Lithuania.

An application shall include a request to grant supplementary protection certificate, copy of the document authorizing to place a product on Lithuanian market for the first time and document certifying the payment of official fees. It should be noted that State Patent Bureau performs only formal examination of the...