Evergreening by whom? A review of secondary patents for omeprazole.

Evergreening, or the practice of technology developers to retain legal protection over valuable drugs beyond the normal patent term, is a well known practice by originators of successful drugs. Generic competitors also attempt similar strategies for commercial reasons. In this paper we look at secondary US and European patents in relation to the 'blockbuster' drug omeprazole (e.g., Prilosec® by AstraZeneca among other brands), with these secondary patents selected because they refer to the 'omeprazole' in either the title, abstract, Derwent Title or first claim. We find that 485 patents meet this criteria, with only 29% owned by the drugs originator (or known subsidiaries or predecessors). AstraZeneca was also the leading applicant by a number of measures, including grant ratio, number of patents filed, forward citation count, family member count and claim breadth.