(no subject)

Listening to my brother talk about his work, and this shit is ridiculous. Xyrem (narcolepsy medicine) was already kind of a silly patent, because it’s the “aqueous solution” of a drug that’s been known since the 1960s. When the patent ran out, the original patent-owners patented their risk management program, so anyone who tried to compete would violate patent if they had the FDA-required “comparable risk management program.” When that was overturned, they kept changing their risk management program over and over so no could make a program comparable to it, until the FDA essentially told them to fuck off. They patented using a lower dose of Xyrem in conjunction with an anti-seizure drug. (Not a specific dose, just a lower dose.) This is just a subset of the shit they pulled! And when all else failed, they price-fixed with an “authorized generic,” which is what my brother’s firm is suing over. It should have been possible to get a cheap generic of Xyrem by 2017, and at the current rate, that won’t be possible until 2025.