Amended policy in Netherlands relating to patented indications

The Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) will no longer publish the full product information about the active substance of generic medicinal products on its website if an indication is still subject to a patent. This has been announced recently by the MEB in the news item Change in policy on patient information due to judgement by the European Court of Justice.

The new policy can be found on the page Patented indication. It states how marketing authorization holders can remove a patented indication from the product information.

After approval of the variation, the indication is no longer part of the marketing authorization and will no longer be listed in the SmPC (summary of product characteristics) and package leaflet. This is also the case when receiving the notification, depending on whether the product has been authorized via the national or decentralized/mutual recognition procedure. The MEB will then remove the patented indication from the Medicines Information Bank.