António de Magalhães Cardoso (Senior Partner) writes an article for “Revista de Direito Intelectual” - Intelectual Law Magazine on “Patent litigation: infringement of patents for therapeutic use”.

"The so-called “medical use patents” differ from the generality of pharmaceutical patents by the discrepancy between the scope of the respective underlying inventions (methods of treatment or of diagnostic), not legally patentable, and the scope of protection conferred thereby (products or processes of obtaining them, limited by a therapeutic purpose). The rights conferred by those patents consist of an exclusive temporary exploitation of the protected products or processes, for the therapeutic use subject of the underlying invention and thus the infringement of those patents is committed by the economic exploitation of the patented product or process, where the patented product or the one obtained by the patented process is intended for the therapeutic use object of the invention."

Read the article here.