Repatenting a medicine

Question

What does it mean that a drug was "repatented"?

Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a decade ago, before it was repatented.

I get that it means the patients will have to pay, however, how can you re-patent something? Intuitively, I believed that once the patent expires, it's over. And that you can only patent novel inventions.

user6726 · Answer 1 · 2019-06-05T17:06:33.257

6

This refers to adding a putatively useful feature to the thing. For instance, a drug can have a certain active ingredient, and the patent on the active ingredient can expire, but you may discover a way to make the drug more effective or in some other way more useful (e.g. by reducing side-effects) by coating it with a purple wax. This product can be patented. This is the situation with Albuterol: the delivery system is new. The active ingredient is now free for the copying, but the particular combination of drug and delivery system known as Proventil is protected by patent.

edited Jun 05 '19 at 17:06

answered Jun 05 '19 at 16:35

user6726

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Does it actually need to be "more effective"? Similar stories I've read seem to imply that any change (usually to the non-active ingredients) is enough to apply for a new patent. – pboss3010 Jun 05 '19 at 16:38
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@pboss3010 It need not be more effective just new, useful, and non-obvious. Useful could be cheaper or more compact. – A. K. Jun 05 '19 at 16:51
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I believe in the case of albuterol, the previous formulation used a propellant which was banned because it included CFCs, and the patent is for a CFC-free delivery system. So the "useful" aspect of the new system is that it's legal. – Nate Eldredge Jun 06 '19 at 06:06

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 06 '19 at 05:14

Drugs are also (re)patented for different uses. I see that two new patents were granted on uses of asprin recently (March 2019).

MARCH 01, 2019 Jennifer Nessel, Assistant Editor The US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has granted 2 new patents related to a novel inhaled rapid-onset aspirin formulation (Asprihale, OtiTopic) in development to treat suspected myocardial infarction (MI).

Repatenting a medicine

2 Answers2