Argentine law previously provided that the owner of a patent in another country could "revalidate" or "confirm" that patent in Argentina and obtain a patent there for the life of the foreign patent on which it was based. This possibility ended when Argentina revised its patent law for compliance with TRIPS (see our August 1996 Newsletter). However, the Argentine Patent Office continued to process applications for revalidation patents filed before the date of the law change on September 29, 1995. The Argentine Supreme Court has now held this practice to be wrong and that the cut-off date after which applications could not validly be filed was the date on which the TRIPS Agreement itself came into effect, namely, January 1, 1995. Therefore, revalidation patents are no longer possible for applications filed in Argentina after January 1, 1995.