IN A BIG win for generic drug manufacturers, a federal judge has invalidated the patents for Imodium A-D – a popular, over-the-counter diarrhea medicine – after finding that the patented improvements to the drug were “obvious” and were added only to thwart competition because the original patent on the drug’s active ingredient was about to expire.
In a harshly critical 34-page opinion in McNeil-PPC Inc. v. L. Perrigo Co., U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania found that McNeil’s efforts to secure additional patents was, in actuality, “a scheme for extending the life of a drug about to go off patent, and McNeil executed this scheme without the slightest regard for the intent and purposes of the patent laws. Indeed, McNeil’s sole motive was to compromise these statutes and constitutional protections for the sake of profits.”
