Health Blog : Supremes' Decision Leaves Pharma Patents Vulnerable: "April 30, 2007, 6:11 pm
Supremes’ Decision Leaves Pharma Patents Vulnerable
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
The Supreme Court today “unanimously reversed a lower appeals court test for when a patent is too obvious to warrant protection under federal law,” Dow Jones’s Mark Anderson reports. The ruling could make it harder for drug makers to defend the type of patents that protect extended-release formulations of brand-name drugs.
“It’s the patent case that the entire patent bar has been waiting for all year,” Aaron Barkoff, a patent attorney at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff and the author of a blog on patents in the drug industry told the Health Blog. “Patents on pharmaceutical formulations might be harder to obtain or to defend in light of today’s decision. Today’s decision seems to have raised the bar for patentability.”"
