Decision 344 of the Andean Community provided in Article 1 that patents should be granted for new, inventive and industrially useful inventions in all areas of technology, irrespective of whether they relate to "products or processes." Article 16 provided that products or processes that were already patented and included in the state of the art could not become the subject of a new patent simply because they were being put to a new use. Peru, a member of the Andean Community, granted a patent relating to a new use of a pharmaceutical which had never itself been patented in Peru. The Secretariat of the Andean Community brought proceedings against Peru before the Andean Tribunal of Justice to have Peru ordered to revoke the patent on the ground that its grant was contrary to the provisions of Decision 344.

The Andean Tribunal ordered Peru to revoke the patent. Its reasoning was that Article 1 of Decision 344 confined patentable subject matter to products and processes and that no other type of invention could be patented. The court distinguished uses from processes and held that use claims in general did not therefore fall within the ambit of statutory subject matter. This conclusion was bolstered by taking the view that new uses were in any case discoveries rather than inventions and, in the case of medical uses, their patenting would additionally be prohibited by the Andean Community's prohibition of patents related to methods of treatment of humans or animals by way of therapy, surgery or diagnosis. The Tribunal was also not persuaded that Peru's obligations under the TRIPs Agreement requiring that it grant patents in all areas of subject matter should override the provisions of Decision 344. Indeed, it held that, in cases of conflict, the law of the Andean Community should override any conflicting treaty obligations of the member states.

Since Peru granted the patent in question, Decision 344 of the Andean Community has been replaced by Decision 486. However, Articles 14 and 21 of Decision 486 are essentially the same as Articles 1 and 16 of Decision 344 so that the judgment of the Andean Tribunal still seems applicable.