Fair protection in a balanced patent system

In an Expert View piece, Andreas von Falck and Miriam Gundt, both partners at Hogan Lovells' global patent litigation practice, give an overview of the intellectual property landscape for drugmakers in Europe.

I. Introduction

The European patent system offers strong and reliable protection of intellectual property rights. Logically, this has a great influence on the pharmaceutical industry which traditionally is divided between originator companies, on the one hand, which are actively researching and developing new drugs, and generics companies on the other hand, which enter the market after patent protection has expired (or, sometimes, beforehand).