MOZZ: Thanks for your reply re patents. I asked my friend, ex Davies Collison Cave patent attorney to have a look at Patent Number: 5,145,841 45, Date of Patent: Sep. 8, 1992, Cullis-Hill,Ghosh. He said it has definitely expired, but it also definitely remains prior art with respect to PPS as a method for treating arthritis and allied inflammatory conditions so anybody wishing to claim their polysulphated polysaccharide, i.e. PPS as a treatment for arthritis would be quite free to do so without fear of successful challenge from a patent infringement perspective. He didn’t do a thorough search, but did find the Paradigm patent which relates to treatment of bone marrow lesions. I asked him whether PAR’s claim that BML was often diagnosed in arthritis patients and that would give them a basis for a successful claim of infringement. He said “provided the other party did not mention BML in their claim for PPS as a treatment for arthritis, PAR would be wasting their money to prosecute them for infringement of its BML patent.” I put the question to him straight out, “Does PAR’s BML patent give us any protection with respect to preventing other parties from marketing PPS as a treatment for arthritis?” His answer, “In my opinion, bugger all”. He did say that even though PPS is a generic, he assumed anybody wishing to market PPS for arthritis would probably have to produce some bioequivalence data and maybe some safety data to get regulatory approval. IMHO this further confirms what other HC posters have been saying that the Paradigm’s value rests almost entirely on the strength of its supply agreement with bene-Arzneimittel, not its IP. We don’t know what is in the agreement, so wejust have to take Rennie’s word that it is rock solid and we have to assumethat as long as PAR delivers, bene will stand by it anyway because it is intheir interest to do so.
Iken2950 makes a goodpoint in his post that down the track when PAR begins negotiating an OAlicense, pharma will want the supply agreement to be renegotiated so that it becomes a party to the agreement withbene, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Bene will obviously be on PAR’s side of the negotiations, not pharma’s.
PS: Have wedisclosed the Cullis-Hill Ghosh patent to the market? If we have, this is adead issue. If we haven’t, it is a compliance issue that should be remediedASAP.
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