In Finland, patent litigation proceedings are handled in the first instance by the District Court of Helsinki.
Each month only a few cases are filed with the court, most of which to date have related to pharmaceutical patents. The primary reason for the high number of pharmaceutical cases is that patent protection of pharmaceuticals has been relatively weak since most of the best-selling products are protected by so-called ‘analogous process patents’.
This special type of patent only provides protection for certain manufacturing methods mentioned in patent claims, instead of the end product or invention.
This means that a generic manufacturer can, in principle, enter the market with a competing generic product using the same active product ingredient manufactured by a different and non-infringing process. For analogous process patents, a reversed burden of proof is applied, which means that during the infringement proceedings, the defendant has to present proof that the patented method has not been used.
The rest of this article is locked for subscribers only. Please login to continue reading.
If you don't have a login, you will need to purchase a subscription to gain access to this article, including all our online content. Please use this link and follow the steps.
For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription to us that we can add you to for FREE, please email Atif Choudhury at achoudhury@worldipreview.com
Pharmaceuticals, District Court of Helsinki
