Friday, May 12, 2017

Trademark - Adrenalin®

     I was reading about a recent court decision granting attorneys fees in an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) pharmaceutical patent case (Par Pharmaceutial, Inc. v. Luitpold Pharmaceutical, Inc., D.N.J. Civ. No. 16-02290 (WHW) (CLW) (April 24, 2017), hosted on Mega.nz to prevent link rot). The case involves a branded drug product called Adrenalin®, which contains epinephrine (see link 1, link 2).

     If you are like me, you immediately paused and asked yourself, how did they register that trademark because epinephrine is more commonly known as adrenalin (see Wikipedia link).

     Unfortunately, the records of the trademark prosecution are not available through the USPTO Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) service because the mark was registered in 1906. However, we do know that they registered the mark for "hemostatic, astringent, blood-pressure raising and stimulating preparations for medicinal or surgical purposes" and that the original product specimens contained epinephrine because the registrant accidentally submitted the original specimens during a Section 8 and 9 filing (see May 3, 2016 Specimen filing on TSDR).



- Henry Park

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