This impact assessment will look into how to optimise the internal market’s industrial property legal framework relating to supplementary protection certificates (SPC) and patent research exemptions (particularly, Bolar exemptions) for sectors whose products are subject to regulated market authorisations. SPCs are an intellectual property right that constitute an extension (of up to five years) to the term of a patent right (of twenty years). They aim to offset the loss of effective patent protection that occurs due to the compulsory and lengthy testing and clinical trials that products require prior to obtaining regulatory marketing approval. The Bolar patent exemption aims at speeding up the entry of generic medicines into the market by allowing early preparatory development on generics to obtain pre-market regulatory approval even when the SPC of the reference medicine is still in force. The Commission will conduct an evaluation and impact assessment of all relevant provisions and options for modernising the SPC Regulations and the provisions of the Directives dealing with the Bolar exemption.
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/

The consultation aims to gather comments and perspectives from various stakeholders and the general public on the relevance of the Erasmus+ programme’s objectives, the effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve them and the efficiency of their implementation. It will also gather views on the coherence of the programme and its added value in relation to the challenges and opportunities in education, training, youth and sport sectors, compared to what could be achieved by Member States only. The consultation also covers the Erasmus+ predecessor’s programmes (e.g. Lifelong Learning, Youth in Action, Erasmus Mundus, etc.) and contain> s forward looking questions regarding a possible successor programme to Erasmus+ in 2020.
Deadline: 31 May 2017
Website: http://ec.europa.eu/