The European Patent Convention precludes the grant of patents for, inter alia, methods of therapy, surgery, or diagnosis applied to a human or animal body. The EPO does, however, allow so called "Swiss-form" second medical use claims in the form "use of compound X for production of a medicament for use in treatment of condition Y", the sole novelty being in using X to treat Y. So far there is no reported case in which a national court has considered exactly what constitutes an infringement of such a claim. It is probably for this reason that the applicant in Contraceptive Method/The General Hospital attempted to secure a claim to a method of preventing pregnancy in a female mammal by administering drugs during different parts of the menstrual cycle: first, a contraceptively effective amount of a hormone LHRH and then, during another part of the menstrual cycle, a combination of LHRH, an estrogenic steroid, and a progestational steroid.

Prior decisions in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany had held that contraceptive methods were not covered by provisions of patent laws directed specifically to therapeutic methods. The Board seems to have concluded that, had the effect of the combination been purely contraceptive, then the claim could have been allowed. But in fact the administration of the steroids had an inevitable prophylactic effect against ailments and since prior case law had held that prophylaxis is a method of therapy, the Board concluded that the claim could not be allowed. The patent was, however, allowed to proceed to grant with a Swiss-style second medical use claim.