Protecting homeopathic treatments in Europe

Little case law is available which could shed light on the position of the European Patent Office (EPO) on patentability of homeopathic medicaments. In particular, it has been questionable whether the requirements of sufficiency of disclosure laid down in article 83 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) can be regarded as fulfilled if the invention relates to a homeopathic compound that is administered in dilutions which go beyond the Avogadro level, ie, dilutions which statistically do not contain a single molecule of the potentially active compound.