Novelty Over Clinical Trials at the EPO

Video overview:

Second medical use claims can be novel over clinical trials in European patents.  Typically, such a claim would be fairly narrow, e.g. perhaps mapping onto specific indications and dosages for a potential commercial product.  For such a claim to be novel, it is important that the prior art disclosure of the clinical trial does not unambiguously disclose the therapeutic effect underlying the claim.  The EPO’s approach to this is explained in more detail in the attached video.