[LINK] In other news....

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 12:15:40PM +1000, Stewart Fist wrote:

> In the area of drugs, Big Pharma has reaped a bonanza from the
> ability to spin out the expiry time of patents by minor changes. The
> Republicans haven't acted to change this for fairly obvious reasons.
>
> This obviously needs new legislation.

it's worse than just "minor changes", usually it's no change to the drug
at all. that's because they grant patents on particular USES of the
drug, not on the drug itself or (as India and some other countries had
it until recently) on the method of synthesis of the drug.

so, that's one of the main ways that evergreening of drug patents occur
- they just re-patent the same old drug by claiming that a "new" (i.e.
not previously cited in a patent application) use for a drug is a new
invention.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>