The case concerned the parallel imports of patented pharmaceuticals, and the Spain and Portugal accession conditions.
A multi-national pharmaceutical manufacturer claimed that our client has infringed its United Kingdom patents for drugs marketed in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The manufacturer complained that our client had imported these drugs from Spain and Portugal.
The manufacturer wished to prevent the importation of drugs for which it held patents because, although those products were marketed in Spain and Portugal, they were not patentable there.
Following submissions on behalf of the parties (and on behalf of other private parties) and on behalf the Commission of the European Communities and the Governments of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Greece, Spain and Italy, the European Court of Justice decided (consistently with its earlier case law) that a patent owner who consented to placing products on the market anywhere in the EC, even in a country where patent protection was inadequate, was not entitled to prevent parallel imports into other member states. The result was that our client could not be prevented from importing those products from Spain and Portugal.
For the judgments of the Mr Justice Jacob in the Patents Court and of the European Court of Justice, and for academic commentary on the enormous significance of this case for the cross-border trade in pharmaceutical products across the European Union, please visit our Judgments and Media page.