Drugs companies will have less opportunity to extend patent protections for their products in the EU following a ruling by Europe’s top court on Thursday.

In a case brought by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and focused around a treatment for brain tumours, the European Court of Justice disagreed with an earlier preliminary opinion by a senior court official which had gone in favour of the pharmaceuticals sector. Instead, the ECJ restricted the availability of so-called supplementary protection certificates which can extend monopoly protections by up to five years after a patent has expired. It said that combination products could only qualify for SPCs if they involved two active ingredients.