BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Valentin de le Court, Camille De Munter and Emilie Van Heck, Osborne Clarke LLP
Osborne Clarke Bastion Tower Marsveldplein 5 Place du Champ de Mars B–1050 Brussels Belgium Tel: +32 2515 9362 Fax: +32 2515 9337 Email: valentin.delecourt@osborneclarke.com Web: www.osborneclarke.com
1. Intellectual Property Rights and Granting Procedure 1.1 Types of Intellectual Property Rights In Belgium, the different types of intellectual property rights available to protect inventions are patents and supplementary protection cer- tificates (SPCs). Trade secrets, although they are not intellectual property rights as such, are also widely used to protect non-patented inventions. Patents are based on statutory law, with three types of patent protections available in Belgium: • national patents – on a national law level, patent rights are organised by Book XI of the Belgian Code of Economic Law (CEL); • European patents – Belgium is a party to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and European patents are available and widely used; and • unitary patents – with the entry into force of EU Regulation No 1257/2012 implement- ing enhanced co-operation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection and with the ratification by Belgium of the Agreement on a Unitary Patent Court, unitary patents may also be obtained and be enforced in Belgium since 1 June 2023.
Supplementary Protection Certificates are gov- erned by Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 concern- ing the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products. This regulation is comple- mented by Title 2 of Book XI of the Belgian Code of Economic Law (see 1.6 Further Protection After Lapse of the Maximum Term ). 1.2 Grant Procedure Patents There are several ways to obtain the grant of a patent in Belgium. • The national route – a patent application is filed with the Belgian Office for Intellectual Property. No substantive examination of the patentability requirements is carried out and a Belgian patent will be automatically granted after 18 months from the filing date. A search report with a written opinion on the patentability of the invention will, however, be drafted by the European Patent Office (EPO) upon the payment of a fee. A Belgian patent will enter into force on the day on which it is made available to the public (ie, on the day it is granted). • The European route – Belgium is a party to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and a European Patent designating Belgium can
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