OBJECTIVE: harmonizing, at Community level, the effective protection afforded to inventions in
the plant protection field and, consequently, to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market
and place the European industry in the same conditions of competitiveness as its North American
and Japanese counterparts.
COMMUNITY MEASURE: Regulation (EC) No 1610/96 of the European Parliament and the
Council concerning the creation of a supplementary protection certificate for plant protection
products.
SUBSTANCE: the Regulation provides for the creation of a new industrial property instrument, the
supplementary protection certificate, which will give plant protection products (insecticides,
fungicides and herbicides) a supplementary protection of five years from the expiry of the basic
patent.
The supplementary certificate will apply to all patents existing at national level, whether granted
under national law, the European Patent Convention (Munich), or, subsequently, the Community
Patent Convention (Luxembourg) instituting a Community patent.
As was decided for medicinal products in 1992, this Regulation harmonizes the conditions for
granting supplementary protection certificates and their duration; it does not create a single
application or a body specifically responsible for issuing supplementary protection certificates. The
application for a certificate must be lodged with the competent industrial property office of the
Member State which granted the basic patent, that office being required to publish notification of
the granting of the certificate.
The certificate, which cannot be granted for a period exceeding five years, gives an overall
maximum of 15 years exclusive protection from the time the plant protection product in question
first obtains authorization to be placed on the market. The certificate can be granted for all products
in respect of which a first authorization for placement on the market in the Community was obtained
after 1 January 1985 and which are protected by a valid patent on the date on which it enters into
force.
DATE OF ENTRY INTO FORCE: 8 February 1997. The Regulation is applicable from 2 January
1998 in those Member States whose legislation in force on 1 January 1990 did not provide for the
patentability of plant protection products.
�