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> Prof. Michael Hoffman from Toronto put me on to the Canadian Patent Database, where you can find that Novo did file a patent there for semaglutide. . .but the
by jzebedee 1y ago
> Prof. Michael Hoffman from Toronto put me on to the Canadian Patent Database, where you can find that Novo did file a patent there for semaglutide. . .but the last time they paid the annual maintenance fee on it was 2018!
> You can even find a letter where their lawyers send a refund request for the 2017 maintenance fee ($250) because Novo apparently wanted some more time to see if they wanted to pay it.
> On the same date in 2019, the office sent a letter saying that “The fee payable to maintain the rights accorded by the above patent was not received by the prescribed due date. . .”
> By that time it was $450 with the late fee added, but that was apparently too much for Novo. They had a one year grace period to make it up, and apparently never did, so their patent lapsed in Canada. And as the Canadian authorities remind them, “Once a patent has lapsed it cannot be revived”.
Impressive failure for "the second-largest semaglutide market in the world."
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI totally believe this happened. If anyone has worked in a big, hidebound corporation, they are familiar with the "That's not my job" quandary.
- eulgro 1y agoTo be honest, given the efficiency of the drug and the huge benefit it could be to society, I feel like if I had been the employee in charge of filing patents I would've more than ready to lose my job in exchange for low cost general availability in the US via (illegal maybe, whatever) cross-border market. It's a nice loop hole and a great thing that once the delay expired they can't file ever again. One's got to find ways to feel like the good guy when working for Big Pharma . That's probably not what happened but it's nice imagining it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Vinnl 1y agoMaybe they'd even do it in exchange for just low-cost general availability in Canada!
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI always wonder-in this case of such an epic company fuck up, does anyone ever get fired? Or is responsibility so diffuse that nobody is ultimately responsible? Pharma companies are really nothing more than holders of time-limited, expensive, exclusive IP. The number one priority should be to maintain those protections as long as possible. How could any patent be allowed to lapse, even if there was limited commercial value, let alone, a blockbuster drug making billions?
- ionwake 1y agoafter working in many companies for decades I can guarantee that the person responsible is some middle manager, who will just blame one of her/his workers who had that piece of work "deprioritised" to instead focus on the styling of a spreadsheet. The paper trail will point to the manager, who will just claim it was allocated to a problem character. The cartharsis comes in knowing that them firing the innocent just keeps them repeating the mistake.
- userbinator 1y agoOr is responsibility so diffuse that nobody is ultimately responsible? That's exactly how things like this happen. No one has responsibility, thinking it's someone else's problem, so no one bothers to do the needful.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> thinking it's someone else's problem, so no one bothers to do the needful Or it’s in someone’s political interest to let the fuckup play out.
- bawolff 1y agoTypically when people get fired for something like this they are just the scapegoat. A failure like this isn't just one dude forgetting, its a system failure where policies and checks failed. If it is solely up to one person that is a failure in and of itself.
- 1y ago
- gpt5 1y agoCanadian manufacturers (Sandoz and Apotex) are preparing to launch their own generic versions in early 2026. I bet many Americans would travel to Canada to buy it there (despite the legality concerns). The medications lasts 2 years in a refrigerator.
- rootusrootus 1y agoIf you're going to go for a two year supply, it's probably better to just risk shipping it. You're not going to come home with that much without it getting confiscated, and you're way more likely to be searched individually than a typical package is.
- themafia 1y agoYou should be able to travel with a 90 day supply without issue.
- daniel_iversen 1y agoNot an American but there’s only very limited circumstances you can travel across the border home to the USA with foreign prescription drugs, right? And this scenario wouldn’t cover it. Unless you just meant they won’t get caught or maybe not fined or confiscated in practice? :)
- toomuchtodo 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45638316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45638316
- valicord 1y agoThat's mainly for visitors. If you're a US resident, you can't just buy medicines abroad, unless of course we are talking about the "they won’t get caught" scenario.
- general1465 1y agoThis is impressive feat of bean counting. To save few thousand dollars, they lost market of few billion dollars. Good job.
- duxup 1y agoThat letter from lawyers probably cost more than 250 …
- decimalenough 1y agoRemember that back in the dim antiquity of 2017, semaglutide was an experimental drug for type 2 diabetes. The sales explosion only happened a few years later when it started being prescribed for weight loss.
- foxglacier 1y agoDon't be so quick to assume it was a failure not intentional. One of the comments in the article suggests it could have been to avoid PMPRB which is price control for patented drugs.
- PerryUlysses 1y agoThe company said it was intentional, probably because of the reason you mentioned: “In a statement to Fortune, Novo Nordisk said there was no mistake regarding its patent maintenance fee in Canada.”
- Scoundreller 1y agoI still don’t get that though: is that worth losing exclusivity over? I guess they think some other production patent will let them maintain exclusivity without it being a patent on the drug itself?