Word: patent
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...distribution of the tiles by counting letters on the pages of the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune and The Saturday Evening Post. For more than a decade he tweaked and tinkered with the rules while trying - and continually failing - to attract a corporate sponsor. The Patent Office rejected his application not once, but twice, and on top of that, he couldn't settle on a name. At first he simply called his creation "it" before switching to "Lexiko," then "Criss-Cross Words...
...drug giants use various measures to hold up the release of cheaper copies of their brand-name drugs when patents expire, the Commission said. The most common tactic allegedly involves filing multiple patent applications for the same medicine - so-called patent clusters - that stake out an extremely broad claim for a drug's intended use and physical form (for instance, whether as a liquid, a capsule or a pill). In one case, the E.U. found 1,300 patents for a single medicine. Other tactics condemned by the Commission include launching litigation that lasts nearly three years on average, and lobbying...
...According to the pharmaceutical market news service Pharmawire, around $114 billion worth of drugs will go off patent in 2008-12, including lucrative brands such as Eisai's Aricept, which treats Alzheimers, and Pfizer's Lipitor, which lowers cholesterol. Some analysts say patent expirations could lead AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline to lose up to one third of their sales...
...irony, say critics of current practice, is that abusing the patent system doesn't necessarily help Big Pharma in the long run. Generics account for just over 40% of the market by volume in Europe, against more than 60% in the U.S. But over the past decade, the U.S. pharmaceutical market has grown twice as fast as the European market. According to IMS data, 65% of sales of new medicines marketed since 2002 are generated on the U.S. market, compared to 24% on the European market...
...Earlier this month, Ernst & Young took drugmakers to task for failing to meet changing market dynamics, such as an increasingly cost-averse customers. The industry faces unprecedented challenges related to patent expirations, pricing and regulatory pressures, shifting demographics, and globalization, yet most drug companies - particularly in Europe - have yet to adapt, Ernst & Young said...