Canada's Supreme Court Tosses Viagra Patent For Vagueness

Freshly Exhumed writes "In a 7-to-0 decision, the Supreme Court Of Canada has ruled that Pfizer Canada Inc.'s patent on well-known erectile dysfunction remedy Viagra is now invalid due to insufficient information in Pfizer's patent application. The upshot is that competitors can now manufacture cheaper, generic versions of Viagra for sale in Canada."

Comments

Generic name

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that there will be generic Viagra, there will be the issue of selecting a generic name. The leading candidate based on Internet searches is "Mycoxaphalin."

Re:Generic name

[JustOK]

Penisfillin

Re:Generic name

[symbolset]

V!gara. They can sell it by email.

Fantastic

[Tragek]

My favourite part of the whole thing:

Writing for a unanimous court, Mr. Justice Louis LeBel said that the quid pro quo of patent legislation dictates that inventors can have an exclusive monopoly on a product provided they forthrightly disclose how it operates.

"If there is no quid – proper disclosure - then there can be no quo – exclusive property rights," he said.

Damn straight.

Generics and Legal Challenges

[reverseengineer]

This particular patent fight is also occurring in other places. In the US, there was a decision last year between Pfizer and Teva that was ruled the opposite way, and if no other challenge is successful, I believe Viagra will continue to exist under patent for Pfizer until 2019. At issue is that Viagra really has two patents- one for sildenafil and its formulation into a drug and one for the use of sildenafil to treat erectile dysfunction. Sildenafil was originally developed for blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, so the application for the ED indication patent trailed the formulation patent by several years. The formulation patent expired this year, but the indication patent lasts until 2019. In the US, a regulatory framework known as a Paragraph IV challenge exists for generic drug manufacturers to either argue that their proposed generic does not violate the existing patents, or that the patents themselves are invalid. This potentially allows them to open up the generic market years before the patent was originally set to expire, so this sort of legal action is not uncommon, particularly for blockbuster drugs.

Re:Insufficient information

[Maow]

So the Supreme Court Of Canada found the patent hard to understand.

You can believe that if it makes you feel good, but reality says otherwise, that the patent was purposefully obfuscated:

"Pfizer gained a benefit from the act -- exclusive monopoly rights -- while withholding disclosure in spite of its disclosure obligations under the act," Justice Louis LeBel wrote on behalf of the court.

"As a matter of policy and sound statutory interpretation, patentees cannot be allowed to 'game' the system in this way. This, in my view, is the key issue in this appeal.

"Pfizer had the information needed to disclose the useful compound and chose not to release it."

So, no one could "understand" it because they didn't disclose proper information - enough for someone skilled in the profession to create a copy of the drug.

It's a remarkably sensible decision and one that should be applied in US courts - particularly in the current mobile patent war (the part about not being allowed to "game the system").

Re:A surprising post.

[Greyfox]

If you stay surprised for more than 4 hours, you should contact a doctor.