Amendments to Regulation for Ratifying Extension of Patent Term come into force as of April 1, 2018
E180411Y1 May. 2018（E222）
The Ministry of Economic Affairs announced amendments to partial articles of the “Regulation for Ratifying Extension of Patent Term” to fulfill the purpose of patent term extension and to simplify the procedures for requesting patent term extension. These amended articles have come into force since April 1, 2018. Main points of these amendments are summarized as follows.
1. With respect to a patent term extension request filed and granted in any foreign country based on the time period of clinical trials or field tests conducted in that foreign country, the pre-amendment requirement for providing relevant documents to prove that the trial or test time has been claimed and granted in that foreign country is removed (amended Article 5 and Article 7);
2. The limitation will be repealed that only the longest among the time periods taken for multiple field tests may be claimed for patent term extension if these field tests were not conducted in sequence (amended Article 6).
3. Enforcement date of the amendments shall be designated. (amended Article 10)
(April 2018)
/CCS
