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Supreme Court Legitimizing Medical Patents?
RobinEggs writes "A case before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday addressed the legality of medical patents. From the article: 'The case focuses on a patent that covers the concept of adjusting the dosage of a drug, thiopurine, based on the concentration of a particular chemical (called a metabolite) in the patient's blood. The patent does not cover the drug itself—that patent expired years ago—nor does it cover any specific machine or procedure for measuring the metabolite level. Rather, it covers the idea that particular levels of the chemical "indicate a need" to raise or lower the drug dosage. The patent holder, Prometheus Labs, offers a thiopurine testing product. It sued the Mayo Clinic when the latter announced it would offer its own, competing thiopurine test. But Prometheus claims much more than its specific testing process. It claims a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent—even if the doctor doesn't act on the patent's recommendations.'"
Looks like it's time for that revolution.
Damn, and here I was hoping to never have to befriend an extremist militia.
Moving to Canada or Australia sounds good, but, like they say, "the grass is always greener".
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Sorry Mr. Patient. While I know exactly what's wrong with you, the Medi-Jackass Inc. will sue me into oblivion if I prescribe the proper treatment to you!
No, I can't tell you either. They'd sue me into oblivion TWICE, then go after you too.
Un-fucking believable.
All I can hope is that medical establishments EVERYWHERE (including insurance companies) tell these people to fuck the hell off and stonewall them into bankruptcy while blacklisting every product and service they use to hasten the process.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Just because they heard the case doesn't mean "Supreme Court Legitimizing Medical Patents".
That's a troll headline.
This is as basic as it gets. Can companies patent the use of facts? Let's see if they can get this right. If they do, at least we know there's an upper limit to their ignorance. If they can't , then it's the end of innovation in the US and the beginning of a stampede of smart, motivated people who want to do Good Things out of the US and into the EU or elsewhere. It's just that simple. Either we're free to innovate in this country, or we leave our country in favor of a land that offers more freedom and opportunity. Just like our forefathers did.
So the doctor needs a license from the patent holder to effectively administer the drug. Well I can see that generating a lot of sales of the drug. Not.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I think it's time to put a stop to it. And it will not using the courts or lawyers.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
That's more than fucked up.
If you crazy Americans legalise shit like that you all deserve what you get.
All I can hope is that medical establishments EVERYWHERE (including insurance companies) tell these people to fuck the hell off and stonewall them into bankruptcy while blacklisting every product and service they use to hasten the process.
My hope is with you, buddy. Except I fear that whenever money is involved, ethics, humanitarianism and other socially awesome things go out the window.
Nice things, you can't have them.
I know nothing about the US patent system - but my first thought on reading this was as follows.
Proper administration of the drug is supposed to violate the patent.
The drug in question is out of patent... (for years)
Does this mean that there was an extended prior where the drug was not able to be administered correctly to start with, or does their argument cause the 'method' patent to be invalid on grounds of prior art which must have existed in order for the drug to be administrated properly in the first place.
the article seems to bitch about how the lawyer is handling the defense. he's not being paid to defend your civil liberties he's being payed to win the case that's easier to do by invalidating the patent on a technical basis.
Brazil had this idea:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4059147.stm
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Sorry Mr. Patient. While I know exactly what's wrong with you, the Medi-Jackass Inc. will sue me into oblivion if I prescribe the proper treatment to you! No, I can't tell you either. They'd sue me into oblivion TWICE, then go after you too.
Un-fucking believable.
35 USC 287(c)(1): With respect to a medical practitioner's performance of a medical activity that constitutes an infringement under section 271(a) or (b) of this title, the provisions of sections 281, 283, 284, and 285 of this title shall not apply against the medical practitioner or against a related health care entity with respect to such medical activity.
There are no damages for infringement by a medical practitioner of a medical activity. No one's going to sue doctors. Stop the FUD.
Supreme Court, like all other government institutions has failed the country by abandoning the Constitution and aligning with special privileges.
By the way, do not forget your rights if you become a jury - NULLIFICATION.
You are not there only to find guilt of the defendant, you are there to question the morality of the law itself. Do not be bullied by the judges, who tell you that they are the law and you must only judge based on the law itself. Always remember - any proceeding where the individual is standing against the government in any way, it's likely that the government is doing the wrong thing.
Do not go along, prevent the unjust laws from existing by acquitting the defendant based on the law being unjust.
You can't handle the truth.
Method patents for medicine are absurd. You can patent surgical techniques, which is super beneficial for all. They don't accept such nonsense in Europe.
There are no damages for infringement by a medical practitioner of a medical activity.
That doesn't mean the doctor won't have a pay a lawyer to convince a judge that 35 USC 287(c)(1) applies.
By the way, do not forget your rights if you become a jury - NULLIFICATION.
Which is one reason why a lot of litigants are so quick to get matters of law disposed of in summary judgment, so that the question of fact has no chance to even go before a jury.
Isn't it routine to administer insulin to diabetics based on testing of the sugar concentration in their blood, the concentration of which is one of the products resulting from varying insulin concentrations in the first place?
You can't patent a scientific concept. You can patent the implementation in a device (or unfortunately in software), sure, but the idea itself? That's just crazy.
Stories like this are why living on John Galt's island would really begin to suck after a while.
No, this is about if a generic version of the drug can be sold as long as the label doesn't instruct the physician about the patented use. The holder of the patent wants to ban generics even though the patent on the drug itself has expired.
I read the transcript of the arguments, and it wasn't really clear to me what way they were leaning. Sotomayor seemed mostly in favor of the patentee, while Breyer especially was critical of the patentee. But these are oral arguments, and justices can take devil's advocate positions during these in order to tease out certain details of the case. Figuring out how the court will swing based on the oral arguments is like reading tea leaves, especially when it comes to patent law.
As for the correctness of the headline: This case is in the Supreme Court because an early summary judgment motion in the district court was granted, ruling that the patent is invalid. The case was appealed to the Federal Circuit, which reversed the ruling, and then Mayo appealed to the Supreme Court.
This case only focuses on the question of patentable subject matter under 35 USC 101, i.e., what kinds of claims should be patentable. In particular, the question here is whether the claims are directed to an application of a law of nature (the metabolism of a certain drug administered to a patient) or to the law of nature itself. Laws of nature are not patentable in and of themselves, but applications of a law of nature can be, as long as the entire law of nature is not "pre-empted" by the claim. In other words, matter-energy equivalence, E = mc^2, is a law of nature. Particular applications of that principle can be patentable, but if the claims are written such that every conceivable application of the principle is covered by the patent, then the principle is pre-empted by the claim (i.e., they might as well have claimed that entire law of nature, because the claims effectively cover it entirely).
Prometheus, and the federal government, both argue that the arguments that Mayo is making are better addressed when considering the claims against the prior art (i.e., under 35 USC 102 and 103). (This is in part because Mayo is doing a hamfisted job of arguing their case, probably because they don't want to sabotage some of their own medical treatment patents.) The issue is that prior art considerations require a time-consuming process called a Markman hearing, where the court decides how to construe the various terms recited in the claims, and usually thereafter, a jury decides whether the prior art covers the claims, which makes the process extremely uncertain. It's Mayo's hope that patents like this can be killed early on in the process by a judge, rather than putting all their money on double-zero and giving it a spin with a jury.
TLDR version: Nobody really knows what SCOTUS was thinking during oral arguments. This isn't the end of the road for this case, even if Mayo loses, because prior art still has to be considered.
This is about if a generic version of the drug can be sold now that the patent on the drug has expired. There are still use patents on it though. Though some uses are not patented. The downside is not that the patient would not receive medicine. But that the patient would receive expensive medicine instead of the generic.
This is actually very funny, but I think it explains why Americans are so blaze about their rights, if they need a Revolution, they have plenty of guns to do it with. They'd be shooting at their children/friends/parents in the army or police, but I guess they know what they're doing.
Considering how US laws (specially patent and copyright ones) are push over other countries, the only way to get rid of it is at the source, not running away.
or 3. The lawyers, judges, and Congress will realize that the entire government will grind to a halt if that strategy is allowed, so they will reject the strategy, completely failing to realize that this is also a problem in other areas.
Older Americans know what previous art patent medicine Prometheus' management and counselors missed: Col. Colt's Lead Therapy.
1. Patent a precise method used to record patent documents in a digital form on a computing device, a computing device with a touch screen, and a hand held computing device with a touch screen.
2. Write software that can be used to record patent documents in a digital form, a vi macro would suffice.
3. Sue patent trolls for patent infringement.
4. Profit.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Results should be reproducible*
* unless you patent them, in which case HANDS OFF, other scientists!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Today a patent on titration, tomorrow on breathing.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
According to the article:
"But Prometheus claims much more than its specific testing process. It claims a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent—even if the doctor doesn't act on the patent's recommendations."
If anyone is spreading FUD it's the patent holder.
It's bad enough that my family physician has to employ a couple of people whose sole job is to deal with the insurance companies all day long. Now it seems, if this idea is approved by the Supreme Court, they'll need to have a patent attorney on retainer to make sure they don't run afoul of some pharmaceutical company who found that a drug's effectiveness can actually be measured.
I thought it was supposed to be a bad idea to have the government getting between the doctor and the patient. If this isn't government getting between me and my doctor, I sure as hell don't know what is.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Unfortunately, what would probably happen is the patent office will simply say 'no you can not patent legal tactics/issues/etc' and that is the end of it. Carve themselves an exemption and allow the problem to continue. Kinda like how the banking industry got that wonderful exemption to patent suits in the new overhaul, it ended up ONLY applying to banks, even though it was tech companies that had originally lobbied for it.
"It claims a physician administering thiopurine to a patient can infringe its patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent..."
Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of American patent law is that the physician will infringe the patent even if he is not aware of the patented correlation, and will thus be liable?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I want to mail them some displeasure
Every retard patent is sapping efficiency from the system if enforced. So either patents become mostly unenforcable, or they are rabidly enforced and clogs the legal system entirely. Or they are rabidly enforced sucessfully and result in total collapse of society and everything else as ideas such as treating dehydration by drinking water and/or using photosynthetic non-domesticated organisms to generate O2 suddenly needs an annual license.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/12/argument-recap-for-want-of-a-good-hypothetical/ ...Over and over, the Court puzzled over how one could start with a law of nature, which is not eligible for a patent, and then find a way to expand on it that is creative enough to earn a patent. It is an inquiry, one of the Justices said early on, that might lend itself to the conjuring of “millions of hypotheticals.” But the hypotheticals that were forthcoming were not very helpful.
You seem to be overlooking the fact that "grinding to a halt" is all that Congress understands these days.
This sounds to me (a layman) quite similar to what the Insulin Pump does -- it measures blood sugar (rather than a metabolite) and automatically dispenses a measured dose of insulin in response.
That doesn't mean they can't try.
Still costs to go to court.
Doesn't mean they can't sue the practice. The practice is a legal entity of itself.
Doesn't mean they can't sue a hospital, clinic or other medical institution.
There's also the possibility that this ruling may or may not supersede these provisions. Again, another long, drawn out, EXPENSIVE court battle.
They're basically depending on someone giving them money to go the fuck away. And the shitty part is, it'd probably be cheaper than fighting it out through our head-up-ass judicial system.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually - it would be better to apply the strategy to the politican lobbist 'profession'.
That way you can profit from those pork barrel profiteering schucks on Capitol Hill.
If you have the patent for lobbying & political donations then you can sue the MPAA, RIAA, oil & power industries :-)
Exactly. A similar example of this is the drug Propecia - the hair loss drug. Propecia is a 1mg dosage of Finasteride that goes for over $2 a pill and is patented so there's no generic option. The thing is, Finasteride isn't new, it has been around since the 60's in a 4mg dosage to treat prostate enlargement and hormonal issues, it isn't under patent anymore and costs about $.02 a pill. Merck came along a few years ago and claimed to invent the same damn drug for a different purpose and got an 8 year patent on it allowing them to jack the price for no good reason.
You forgot hand held computing device without a touch screen, hand held computing device with a physical keyboard, hand held computing device with a keyboard accessory (i.e. USB, wireless, or BluTooth keyboard)
It will never get past (1), as congress will exempt itself from the law, like it does with nearly every other regulation, and go about in their blissfully unfettered world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Simple: for $20000, Medi-Jackass will offer to settle our of court, with both sides knowing full well that litigation will cost the doctor $100,000+. The doctor's insurance company will then inform him that if he screws up like that again, they will drop him, making him effectively unable to practice.
See how easy that was?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That is exactly what happened with tax shelter "business method" patents.
I say we move to patent sitting in a court of justice and using a small hammer like device to call court to order :)
then we patent electoral campaign fundraising
either we get lots of money or we get the patent system changed in no time... either way we win :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Cost of clinical trials/marketing the drug for the new purpose? Probably doesn't justify a 100X price increase but still its worth something.
"patent merely by being aware of the scientific correlation disclosed in the patent—even if the doctor doesn't act on the patent's recommendations.'"
This happens to involve doctor patient, but this type of things could apply to any service provider and customer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All I can hope for is people on /. will read and understand articles before posting...but clearly you have shown that hope is in vain.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No one claimed prior art? Someone got paid off big time. Measuring something in people's blood (or other places) then changing the dosage of medicine has been going on for decades. They are measuring one chemical. So do a lot of other tests that have been going on for decades.
example: All the people who measure the sugar levels in their blood then give themselves (or have someone give them) a shot.
Many things are measured in people to determine the amount of medicine they should be getting. This is not new. Or even innovative. Patents are supposed to be specific. Like the gun patents were in the 1800s. How many gun patents are there? A change to the trigger mechanism or the way the barrel moves, new patent. A whole lot were thrown out since they were not different enough from existing patents (if I remember that history channel show about guns correctly). This patent was written as broad as possible. That alone should be reason to have it thrown out.
Sorry, but the fact that your patient is still screaming in agony after the minimum dose of morphine can't be used as evidence that they might need more of the drug. That would infringe.
We suggest rolling a six sided dice and scaling the dose based on that.
You think they care what happens to other professions? There's a reason that no one likes lawyers.
Seriously, law and science/medicine don't mix especially well. They kind of need each other but they're so incompatible on so many levels.
The point is not to use the legal system to enforce patents. The point is to use the *threat* of a drawn out legal case to extort a settlement, even if there's a chance that the claim isn't 100% applicable.
or 4. Someone will patent the strategy and patent the strategy to halt the original strategy and will rule the world. Muuaaaaawwwwwaahhhh!!
... that Republicans were all worried about creating Death Panels, when in fact, they were defending them.
Check your premises.
I represent generic drug companies. I can tell you that brand operations do not go after, and would not go after, individual doctors. It would be impractical. Interestingly, the Caraco v. Novo Nordisk case heard on Monday by the Supreme Court was exactly about a situation where Novo Nordisk was going after Caraco not because of anything Caraco did, but because of what doctors and patients would do. So much for that straw man. The Supreme Court is dealing with a line-drawing problem in Mayo v Prometheus. You can't patent gravity but you could have (long in the past) patent a pile driver. The Prometheus patent is about titrating medication levels for a certain class of prior art drugs using prior art tests. Too low, and the medicine is ineffective, too high and it is toxic. Nobody denies that Prometheus was the first to make the investment to come up with the decisional protocol it claimed. There is no doubt that if the claim had added the step "and administering an appropriate dose to a patient" or something like that it would be patent eligible subject matter. This is an important question. Drug companies do expensive research to find new indications to treat with a drug all of the time. Anti-psychotics often will treat other conditions, but who knows which ones? At what doses? If you cannot patent the process of treating the new disease, you cannot get a patent: the molecule is already patented. We are talking high-8 to low-9 figures here to find that out. Let me assure you, nobody will ever know if you cannot patent the result. None of the attorneys offered help to the Supreme Court in how to word the drawing of the line so that it can be applied. The Supreme Court does not take a case to take a case. It takes it to solve a problem in the law. Here, the decision will apply to non-medical as well as medical patents. As another poster pointed out, the problem that Chas complains about has been solved by Congress. It would have been impractical to sue doctors in any event. Companies go after competitors, in this case a competing testing lab. This is just about the Benjamins to both of them.
There are no damages for infringement by a medical practitioner of a medical activity. No one's going to sue doctors. Stop the FUD.
If this goes through it's going to be illegal for you to use a competing test yourself, which is what they're actually afraid of. If you don't go to the doctor he can't try to sell you lipitor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
cobblers - the grass is fuckin' brown in Australia mate
If the drug already exists, then no, I don't think it's "worth something". Do you think Bayer would have been justified in seeking a new patent on ASA if it's dosage is heavily reduced and used to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not going to tell you that the Supreme Court is infallible, far from it, but in cases like this they will be looking at the laws Congress has set and doing their best.
It isn't up to the SCOTUS whether certain patents should or should not be allowed. That's Congress's job. Not their's.
Most likely if it has gotten to the SCOTUS there is some ambiguity in the law and/or case law on how it should be implemented in this case.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Basicallly they are describing the action of a governer, a massively common device in electric, mechanical, and naturnal systems (electrical, water, physical,mechanical, etc). To be more specific, the human endocrine system does this all the time, eg: if the body produces too much sugar in the blood, it is sensed and the pancreas produces insulin to reduce the amount of sugar in the blood. Its one of thousands of feedback control systems in the body that everyone is born with. What this drug company wants a patent for, is something that physicians, engineers, farmers, and thousands of others study, learn and use everyday. Its far overreaching. That they had the balls to even attempt a patent suit like this means that 1) they believe the judge to be an idiot 2) they want to control large portions of the world economy 3) They want people to pay them for general knowledge. If the judge allows it, then you really *will* have to buy that sniper rifle, and bring about badly needed patent/copyright reforms.
If that IS the case, why does that language specifically even need to exist?
How is this helping further the healthcare in the US exactly? Making it cheaper? No. Making it more accessible? No.
That's really the only 2 things need the medical community needs to be working on. Anything else is disgusting greed! Oh, right. Capitlism! nevermind....
the testing process, and the correlation of patient response (remission, leukopenia, hepatotoxicity) was developed in multiple studies paid for by prometheus over a decade ago. they patented the test product which reports a couple drug metabolite levels (the 2 found to be the most clinically significant in the entire metabolic pathway) ,and their reference ranges (which correspond to efficacy/toxicity).
Mayo started offering a test with the same 2 markers and similarly structured reference ranges... so they're getting sued.
Prometheus has revolutionized the way doctors administer thiopurine drugs. Ask any gastroenterologist who prescribes this class of drug.
Prometheus has given the world an understanding of the 2 drug marker's relevance to patient's treatment... they're suing mayo for copying their test, not suing doctors for thoughtcrime... as the blurb implies
Yeah, except that this is in the Supreme Court now because they are suing doctors. Well, they're suing the clinic where those doctors offer treatment, but the law you quoted covers "related health care entities" which you would hope meant the clinic they work at! Apparently no court so far has felt that it does. And "we won't sue you Dr. Doctor, but we'll get a few million out of the hospital you work at and I don't think they'll be pleased with you" seems to more or less have the same net effect. Besides which, the patent troll doing the suing has stated that they DO intend to go after doctors. The summary in fact is about how they even plan to go after doctors who use the drug at all, because they can't PROVE they didn't base the dosage on the patented dosage levels.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I got thirsty. My doctor asked me a few questions and told me to drink water from a sterilized vessel sold by this company, Corning I believe. It worked. Unbeknownst to us there was this patent for "method of detecting and correcting dihydrogen monoxide deficiency". We're in big trouble now.
It really is that ridiculous, unless Slashdot is just being sensationalistic which I don't think they are. Also, another way DHM can get you in big trouble. That stuff's deadly. Stay away from it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So you believe that the holder of a patent on a drug would shun the extra sales from an additional use for it just because they can't get another patent?
Health care in the U.S. is already far too expensive. Do we really need more excuses to price it out of reach? There is exidence that that is one reason lower income people in the U.S. die younger than the wealthy. If nobody can afford it, it might as well not exist.
I sincerely hope the AMA mounts a boycott against Prometheus until it does a crash and burn.
Yeah, except that this is in the Supreme Court now because they are suing doctors. Well, they're suing the clinic where those doctors offer treatment, but the law you quoted covers "related health care entities" which you would hope meant the clinic they work at!
Not quite:
Mayo Collaborative Services and Mayo Clinic Rochester (collectively, “Mayo”) formerly purchased 7 PROMETHEUS LAB v. MAYO COLLABORATIVE and used Prometheus’s test, but in 2004, Mayo announced that it intended to begin using internally at its clinics and selling to other hospitals its own test.
Prometheus sued a competing manufacturer, not a doctor or just a clinic.
Except for Prometheus Labs, who is suing the Mayo Clinic over this patent. And really, if you can't sue doctors over a patent that doesn't just cover a method of testing something, but that the levels of the something correlate to something else, then what's the point of the patent?
But, how did they get a patent on the drug, without knowing about the blood chemical correlation? Isn't their expired drug patent prior art to the blood chemical correlation patent?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
So they aren't usually chasing tonnes of potentially new users, they are chasing the few people that will really benefit from the drug. Perhaps a way around this would be to amend the patent laws so that people/companies are free to experiment with other uses for a patented drug. So if a drug is patented as a "blood thinner" than if someone else pays for the research and finds another use they can market their own version for that particular use. Could be the best of both worlds: corps get their money back from the primary use, public research could find the smaller volume uses and be free to license them to generics makers to keep the prices low for the people that often have much more severe medical issues that the drug works for.
Except for Prometheus Labs, who is suing the Mayo Clinic over this patent.
Yeah, but they're suing the Mayo Clinic not because their doctors are using their test, but for manufacturing and selling a competing test. The Mayo Clinic isn't just a clinic, but also a research and manufacturing company.
And really, if you can't sue doctors over a patent that doesn't just cover a method of testing something, but that the levels of the something correlate to something else, then what's the point of the patent?
Induced infringement... The doctors infringe the patent, but a manufacturer who makes the test is inducing them to infringe. And while you can't get damages from the doctors, you can get damages from the manufacturer.
or 3. The lawyers, judges, and Congress will realize that the entire government will grind to a halt if that strategy is allowed, so they will reject the strategy, completely failing to realize that this is also a problem in other areas.
This is exactly what happened in banking... they had a patent troll attack, and the bansters' government pets just made that entire sector immune [1] from the problem.
So what you get is further distancing of sectors like banking and law from the rest of us... and increases likelyhood of a (more violent) revolution.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303731.html?nav=emailpage
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Doctors are perfectly free to prescribe meds for any purpose they see fit -- doesn't matter if it's FDA approved or not. It seems like your example is more a patent on marketing than on treatment since a doctor can order plain old generic finasteride for alopecia if he wants to.
The first shaman who discovered that a certain amount of each of a few herbs could seem to cure various ailments is the inventor here. I'm fairly certain Neanderthal patents have expired by now.
It will only stop when somebody attempts to apply the same strategy to the legal profession.
Are you kidding? The lawyers would LOVE this. You'd have lawyers billing massive hours for lawsuits over strategies on how to sue someone.
Who is John Galt?
The only way is to create so many clones that the company holding the patent is swamped with litigation cost so high that it cannot enforce it.
FTA you linked:
But the cost of foreign imported drugs has soared, from about 50% to 85% of the Aids programme's cost.
Way to hide the fact that the cost of the drugs went up 6-fold, I did the math, if drugs was $50 and other costs
$50 then they'd have to go to drugs approx $300 + other costs $50 for BBCs percentage figures to work, typical pro-corporate number fudging by the BBC.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Sorry Mr. Patient. While I know exactly what's wrong with you, the Medi-Jackass Inc. will sue me into oblivion if I prescribe the proper treatment to you!
How about this one?
Sorry Mr. Patient. While I know exactly what's wrong with you, and how to treat it, I can't do that because the FDA has not approved the drug for this treatment. And I'm also sorry that since that drug is off patent and you can't patent the treatment, no pharmaceutical company would be stupid enough to spend the tens of millions of dollars it takes to get FDA approval.
This is actually happening to me.
The major cost of testing a new compound is to prove the drug is safe, i.e doesn't kill the patient, or has any other nasty side effects. Whether it actually does any good is almost left as an afterthought. Since (almost) all of that should be well established by the time someone comes up with an idea for a second use, then no, they should't be able to get a God damned patent for using the same drug for something new. They can got a patent for the drug, that's it.
Stefan Axelsson
Been meaning to point this out since /. has been using the green cross category picture. Here in California if you see a green cross, it means there's a marijuana club nearby.
Does this 'patent' not describe the simple mechanism of a closed loop?
Someone please tell me when this kind of nonsense became an innovation?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The FDA controls what label appears on the drug including generics. If the label includes a patented use then it is patent infringment to sell the drug as a generic.
Is there anything stopping a doctor from prescribing a 1/4 pill dose of the old Finasteride?
WALSTIB!
No, toxicology studies are far less costly than clinical trials, which determine if a medication or medical device is efficacious. To gain a new indication on a drug, new clinical trials have to be performed to establish efficacy. Even a single study involving a few thousand patients is incredibly expensive. Also, Proscar is a 5mg dose, not 4mg.
This isn't necessarily true. In CT for example, I can't legally prescribe narcotic analgesics to treat heroin dependency. I can prescribe them for pain, but the patient must be in a treatment program and under the care of a physician registered for this purpose. In all other cases, when if I prescribe something off-label, I can incur liability if that patient is harmed from that medication. Lawyers will usually pursue the physician instead or in addition to the manufacturer.
These patents are so much crap! God I hope this gets shot down quickly. I'm in Australia at the moment, but with the free trade agreements, if this gets up, it'll have global effects. It's time the legal system saw these for what they are and stomps them down. I wish they had to pay punitive damages for wasting the courts time with this sort of rubbish.
What the hell is a "use patent"? Why can you patent the use of an already patented invention?
Gravity Sucks
cobblers - the grass is fuckin' brown in Australia mate
mate, cobblers?
1 "This Drug A reduces blood pressure"
2) "Using Drug A with Drug B is safer than Drug A"
Patent 1 has expired patent 2 still exists. The FDA states that the drug must be labeled stating Drug A should be used with Drug B. The drug company thinks patent 2 should keep generics off the market that are labeled like the above.
3rd alternative : write themselves an exception.
Every other group in the US does. It is a nation of exceptionalists.
Why should 2 ever have been protected as a patent in the first place?
Shouldn't the patents have been:
"Drug A" --> We invented this drug. Some uses may include 1,2,3.
"Drug B" --> We invented this drug. Some uses may include "With Drug A", 2, 3
No patent for use 4 that happens to use Drug A and Drug C
???
Gravity Sucks
I notice you didn't answer the question. Do you think Bayer would have the right to re-patent ASA just because they introduced a low dose version, but otherwise chemically identical in every single way to an Aspirin tablet you'd take for a headache, because the active compound can reduce risk of stroke and heart attack?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Actually, "other countries" could easily solve the patent problem in the US by banding together and refusing to adhere to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights). The US would be forced to overhaul the system, or else watch half their economy relocate overseas.
Medical trolls that should help kill more of us wonder if they are republican.
If they paid for the research proving that it was effective yes. I would limit patents to the use that they apply for though. So ASA expiring patent for "headache" would mean that generics could be used for headaches after the patent expires. If Bayer or someone else than studied and found that it was useful for something else they could get the patent for that use. Obviously over the counter drugs are a bad example because they are so readily available but prescription meds something like that could work. It would also give universities a way to get funding: they might not have the resources to develop a drug from scratch or to do the initial safety testing. But they might be able to determine that the drug also works on another interesting pathway for a different disease. At worst then money would go to the universities at best the laws of where it was discovered would mean that the new patent is a publicly funded research/public good and anyone could manufacture for free.
6-fold != a factor of 6.
Fold a sheet of paper six times. How many sectors are there? (Hint: Not six)
These guys are as ignorant as posts. They are unable to understand even the rudimentary implications of their own rulings. Its like Cain has been replicated and his clones were appointed to the court.
Ya know, it's not like Engineers have been given some magical glasses and are the only people that see how messed up the system is. Plenty of lawyers and judges do too (Congress I can't speak for).
Are you forgetting that to be a registered patent attorney you have to have a science-based background?
Please get off your high horse.
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Seems like a fair and reasonable application of the patent holders rights. Where is the story here?
That's not how I've ever heard the term used in common language, see:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fourfold
That's how (n)-fold is commonly used.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
OK, that's not what I was told in the one study I took part in. (Which covered just this scenario, i.e. old drug - new use). But I claim no further expertise.
Still don't think it warrants a new patent. Smells too much of "business method" patent for my taste. And we don't allow those here. You can patent the drug and that's it.
Stefan Axelsson
If these judges agree with Prometheus Labs then they will condemn many others to death and, unfortunately, probably not themselves -- which is what is really needed for a Darwin Award.
Maybe by allowing such stupidities you could give the Darwin Award to the USA - once they have killed themselves by such stupidity. Hopefully the meme will not infect European law makers - I don't want to die because of the idiocy of others.
Too much sugar in the coffee of the examiner.
Measuring the concentration of blood sugar and
dosing insulin correctly sounds like prior art.
So does "my head ache is back" take one
more aspirin.
p.r.n. as occasion requires
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Simple: for $20000, Medi-Jackass will offer to settle our of court, with both sides knowing full well that litigation will cost the doctor $100,000+. The doctor's insurance company will then inform him that if he screws up like that again, they will drop him, making him effectively unable to practice.
See how easy that was?
But a less expensive strategy is to file a "amicus curiae" ( "friend of the court")
brief that states that this company is blowing smoke and extorting (a threat is
all it takes) money on a national and global scale.
Some folks call it the /. effect where a site is hammered -- heck hammer
the litigant in a way that each letter must be documented logged and
addressed all asserting that the invention is also not novel.
And sure IMNAL....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.