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MWI: Patents, trademarks and copyright

Who owns therapies that lessen or remove symptoms?

In the United States of America, that question sounds easy: the company that discovered the drug, developed it, turned it into millions of identical white pills, and sells it. As Johnson & Johnson did with topiramate.

Except that J&J did not discover topiramate, scientists at a Pennsylvania company known as McNeil did. J&J bought out McNeil, and for a few years in the history of topiramate, it was J&J's number 2 seller. McNeil, and then J&J, gave me contracts from 1982 to 2004 to discover a little piece of how topiramate was effective, and then to write about side effects.

Topiramate really was discovered by McNeil scientists. Created by organic chemists, and by serendipity, a neuroscientist, Dr JF Gardocki discovered it was effective in eliminating seizures in mice. Topiramate did not come from a jungle, or a desert, was not part of a therapy used for thousands of years by indigenous peoples. I have no problem in stating that topiramate belongs completely to J&J.

Who has the right to develop, market and sell products or processes in the US is controlled by the United States Trade and Patent Office.

Once a patent is filed, the patent owner has a limited time of owning the sole rights, when it expires, the product or process is open for anyone. Generic drugs are all marketed and sold because the patent-holder's right have expired.

The USPTO has a huge database of every patent ever filed in the US. However, finding a patent is not intuitive; the database is not user friendly. If you want to search for something, or someone specific, please go through the videos and resources on their website to learn how to do this click here.