The European Commission has published a Call for Tender for a “Study on the Legal Aspects of the Supplementary Protection Certificates in the EU” to be used to help decide both whether to revise the existing EU SPC legislation (which introduced national SPC rights to be granted by EU Member States) and whether to introduce a new SPC title at EU level.  The current legislation creating the new Unitary patent system does not create such a “Unitary SPC”; a Unitary patent may be used as the basic patent for an SPC application but the SPCs would be granted by national authorities (based on national marketing authorisations) and have national scope.  The European Commission’s deadline for receipt of tenders is 4 February 2016.  The contract for the study is expected to be signed in April 2016 with the study being completed within 10 months.

“SPCs and the UPC: Current Status” by Laura Reynolds here.