Overview

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has recently issued a practice note confirming that it will no longer accept patent applications with claims to a second medical use in the traditional Swiss-type form. This type of claim will in future be rejected as lacking clarity. This brings the practice of the UKIPO into line with that of the EPO.

Swiss-type claims (a claim to the 'use of compound X in the manufacture of a medicament for the treatment of disorder Y') came into being to meet an important commercial need in the pharmaceutical sector: to protect R&D investment in identifying second medical uses for known active ingredients. This unusual form of claim was first suggested by the Swiss Patent Office as a way of overcoming some restrictive provisions in the original version of the European Patent Convention 1973 ('EPC 1973'). This treaty governed the grant of European Patent, but unfortunately was drafted at a time when the need for patent protection for second medical uses was not widely understood.

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