I identified a novel drug compound that was patented for another bioactivity. Now I have identified another novel activity on same bioactive molecule. Is it patentable for this new biological activity?
Many of the times patent enclose all the allied biological activity apart from what is claimed as a part of description, so the patent block all other activity to led a invention of further, however if your activity is remarkable and follows from uniqueness and unable to pass obviousness (which is extremely rare here) you can get activity patent, under 35 U.S.C. § 103
According to Indian patent law and which reads in the following lines is not patentable " the mere discovery of any new property or new use for a known substance or of the mere use of a known process, machine or apparatus unless such known process results in a new product or employs at least one new reactant"
Dear friend, you have to carefully look at the claims and find out its scope of invention. If your present claim is totally out of the scope of the earlier claims which the other party has claimed, you can have a fair chance of getting a patent provided that the composition or the method applied for producing the compound is not obvious. It will also depend on how well you draft the claim part of your patent application. Many a times even a very noble drug fail to secure patent protection due to its weak drafting of the claims.
I would recommend you to run a CLEARANCE SEARCH with the present reference patent either by you / any leading Intellectual property firms (like Thomson Innovation, IP serve, etc.) to reduce INFRINGEMENT RISKS after filing your patent application. The cost of clearance search will be very less compared to a patent which gets invalidated by the competitor.
You could also use free sources, if you have time to search by yourself.. Some of them which I would use are..
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/advancedSearch?locale=en_EP
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/search.html
https://ip.com/search/results.html
http://mypatentassets.com/
Regards,
Bala
If you have made any modification to the compound that is responsible for the new bioactivity and if these aspects have not been disclosed anywhere, leave alone patents, you can patent else it is not possible.
For more details see the Guidelines For Examination Of Patent Applications In The Field Of Pharmaceuticals , published by Indian Patent Office last week.
You have to read the first patent very carefully, especially the claims. But in principle it is possible to get a new patent for a known substance when you have found a new medical application, this is called second medical use. For example: a compound is patented as antidepressant , when you have suprinsingly found that it is also an anticancer drug and when this is novel, then you can in principle try to get a patent for the second medical use. Of course your patent would be dependent on the first patent where the substance is protected.
In Europe, the drug (X) already known for treating a disease (Y) but found useful to treat a different disease (Z) is patentable as 'X for use in the treatment of Z'. You can get a similar scope of protection (as a 'method of treatment' claim) in the US, and if the drug needs to be formulated in a different way, you can get a claim to the new composition. If all you have found is that drug X, known to treat disease Y, works by pathway A rather than pathway B (and is administered in the same way and in the same dosage), then you are in the realm of scientific papers rather than patents. Talk to a patent attorney in one of the major cities, if you ask nicely, they will probably give you 30 minutes free advice in order to find out whether you have a valuable invention (and of course to find out whether you can pay their fees). J
I was isolated one novel compound as anticancer agent from one medicinal plant. Claiming towards compound is not patentable. is compound utility towards cancer Can it patentable?
New use of a known compound is not patentable in India u/s 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act.
U can apply in USPTO where new use of a known coumpound is patentable
Yes, it is possible to patent a new use for a known drug in few countries but in India its a non patentable subject matter
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