Pharmaceutical Inventions Research Articles

United States patent prior art rules and the neem controversy: a case of subject-matter imperialism?

A recent United States patent covering an improvement to the naturally-occurring pesticide in neem tree seed oil might have been rejected as 'obvious' if United States patent law recognized certain forms of prior inventive activity on a par with similar activity occurring within the United States' borders. But the US only recognizes prior 'knowledge, use or invention' as blocking a claim to a patent when those activities take place within US borders, or are evidenced by publications accessible in the US, or, more commonly, by foreign patents. Neither of these last forms of tangible 'prior art' is likely to be available to block patents on biodiversity inventions – most notably because of the fact that most developing nations do not allow patents on pharmaceutical or agricultural inventions, categories subsuming most biodiversity-related advances. Although the United States patent only has direct force within the United States, it is nonetheless highly significant to this global dispute, since the United States and other developed nations stand to be the major markets for the end-products of neem. This paper argues that the border-drawing distinctions in US patent law are archaic, counter to stated policy directives and are disproportionately influencing the developing world's stance towards GATT and its intellectual property rights provisions.

Company Profile Du Pont Merck: analysis of patenting 1993 - 1996

This review covers patenting by the Du Pont Merck joint venture, together with pharmaceutical inventions in the name of EI Du Pont de Nemours. Although the overall level of patenting has declined since 1994, a clear project structure is apparent, with emphasis on antithrombotics and antihypertensives; research into cognitive function, a major focus in the early 1990s, seems now to have ceased. Retroviral protease inhibitors and antitumour agents are also important, and prostaglandin mechanisms in inflammation are now being studied. Over 40% of patent applications are filed only in the US, where all R&D takes place, and broad international cases from the joint venture are relatively infrequent.

Use invention of a chemical substance

The Japanese Patent Law defines the patentable subject matter and considers the following types or categories of inventions ‘a thing (substance)’, ‘a method’ and ‘a method of producing a thing (substance)’; however ‘use’ as a category is lacking. Although a discovery per se is unpatentable, the discovery of a new use of a product is practically patentable in a claim within the category of ‘a thing’ or ‘a method’. Two or more use inventions are deemed to be identical if those uses are substantially undistinguishable from one another with respect to ‘the range within which they are applied’, ‘means of application of the use’ and ‘time of application of such use’, even when the intended uses are different. An invention of use in the field of pharmaceutical products is patentable in the form of a claim: ‘substance or composition coupled with the indication of the intended pharmaceutical use’. Under the ‘Guidelines for practice in examining pharmaceutical inventions’ two or more inventions of pharmaceutical uses of one product are regarded as being identical if (A) the pharmacological effects are based on the same or closely related pharmacological action, or if (B) they are substantially undistinguishable in ‘the range of applications’. Actually, the guideline is not practised so strictly, particulary with respect to the standpoint (B). Problems are also left unsolved in Japan in pharmaceutical use inventions with respect to the entity of the patent right granted and to the preservation of right and further how to judge infringement, due to the fact that the subjects of application are human beings. For solving these problems some means can be contrived: ‘method of curing disease’ is deemed to be patentable subject matter, or a generic claim is granted on the first use and a specific claim is granted on the second use. Also in Japan various opinions exist as to whether the so-called second use should be patentable subject matter or not and in which form the second use, if patentable, should be patented.

Relevance of basic research to pharmaceutical invention

Relevance of basic research to pharmaceutical invention

Early American pharmaceutical inventions

Early American pharmaceutical inventions