Talk:Protease inhibitor (pharmacology)
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"In all cases, patents remain in force until 2010 or beyond." This comment appears in two articles I've seen so far. What does it mean? Maury 15:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a reference to United States patent law. The short explanation is that when a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug, it has the exclusive right to produce and sell it in the US for so many years. I think it's fifteen. After that, the patent enters the public domain and anyone can look up the patent and make a generic drug to sell using the original company's ideas. However, the patent stays "on the books but no longer in force" to prevent fraud. The author is trying to say that there won't be generic versions of any of these drugs until at least 2010. Money for a while, bragging rights forever, that's US patent law.
The exception is that the government has the right to interfere with patents if the drug was developed in whole or in part with the use of public funds (grants). That was the big deal about Norvir in 2003.
Here's some more detail and probably more accuracy:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/patent.htm
Darkfrog24 17:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Bold text
