SPC export waiver: a long road ahead

On hearing that the European Commission had on 28 May 2018 adopted a proposal for a Regulation to amend Regulation (EC) 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate (SPC) for medicinal products, many practitioners might have been forgiven for imagining that such proposal sought to deal with what are to them are the most pressing issues with the SPC Regulation—perhaps by seeking to introduce a unitary SPC to accompany the proposed unitary patent, or perhaps by addressing some of the confusion surrounding certain aspects of the SPC Regulation that has led to so many references to the Court of Justice but has resulted in so little clear guidance from that body.