The pharmaceutical industry is known to be one
industry in which obviousness of patents is particularly hard to prove. Pharmaceutical
formation patents specifically make for challenging obviousness claims, as the
drugs tend to have the similar ingredients to other drugs that have been used
in the past to cure others health problems. A pharmaceutical formation is a
means for which a chemical compound is used in order to be easily administered
to patients. Tyco’s patent 9,211,954 claims a formulation of the API Temazepam,
a drug used for the treatment of insomnia.
In this particular case, the obviousness
revolved around whether the formulation claimed by the ‘954 patent was obvious
in light of Tyco’s prior 15 and 30 mg formulations of Temazepam (Patentlyo).
The federal circuit decision was “The asserted patents generally disclose a
surgical device … that employs ultrasonic energy to cut and coagulate tissue in
surgery. … The device includes a stationary and movable handle at one end and a
shaft with a tube within a tube construction at the other. … A clamp and a
curved blade sit at the distal end of the shaft. … The clamp opens and shuts
like a jaw against the blade via a dual cam mechanism (PharmaPatents).
Mutual
Pharmaceutical appealed and the Federal Circuit affirmed the obviousness
ruling.
Hey Ryan!
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be a ton of pharmaceutical companies in the blogs this week. This would make sense as I believe it would be hard to modify the ingredients in a medicine enough for it not to be obvious while still being a viable treatment for the same diseases. Great job! but by the way you forgot to add the closing quotation marks at the end of your last big quote there.
Nice post Ryan, I also wrote about a case involving a pharmaceutical company this week. With the prevalence of "brand x" or generic drugs, making rulings on obviousness is extremely difficult.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much money to be made in pharmaceuticals! Patents are gold mines, of course, but especially in this industry, because you a monopoly over a remedy for decades. Cool blog plot.
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