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In Defense Of Secondary Pharmaceutical Patents: Response To The Un's Guidelines For Pharmaceutical Patent Examination, Christopher M. Holman

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In 2015 the United Nations Development Programme issued a document entitled Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Patent Examination: Examining Pharmaceutical Patents from a Public Health Perspective (the “Guidelines”). The heart of the Guidelines is a category-by-category examination of eight types of “secondary” pharmaceutical patent claims: Markush claims; selection patents; polymorphs; enantiomers; salts; ethers and esters; compositions; doses; combinations; prodrugs; metabolites; and new medical uses. The Guidelines advise patent offices to apply heightened patentability requirements to these claims in a manner that would effectively deny patent protection to important pharmaceutical innovations currently afforded patent protection. In particular, the Guidelines postulate that many forms …