Don't worry about the law think about the practical impact.
It's now completely legal to ignore the patent in Canada so the price in Canada will plummet.
Canadian pharmacies can legally sell it and Americans (and all other foreigners for that matter) traveling there can legally buy it.
Unlike the criminal law, Novo nordisk would have to go after every single person individually and make the case that they are infringing the American patent. This is all without the help of the police or customs, as a private civil matter.
Obviously this would be uneconomic for Novo Nordisk. You can't search anyone as you don't have any warrants, as it's not a crime and then even if you could, you need to prove that the drugs they have on them were purchased in Canada.
Foreigners who currently pay a huge amount of money would only have to make one trip to Canada in however long period it takes for the drugs to expire. I know I would certainly make a day trip if I was using this drug.
Intellectual property law firms offer services to renew and watch registrations like this worldwide and it would have been very simple to have a contract with one of them.
> Canadian pharmacies can legally sell it and Americans (and all other foreigners for that matter) traveling there can legally buy it.
Well, about that... Aren't all variants of medications like these prescription-only? And in Canada you can't fill a foreign prescription without having a local doctor sign off on it, as far as I know.
> Unlike the criminal law, Novo nordisk would have to go after every single person individually and make the case that they are infringing the American patent. This is all without the help of the police or customs, as a private civil matter.
I don't think that's quite right. One of the things that CBP does is inspect incoming shipments, and confiscate IP-infringing things.
Think about the recent Apple Watch SpO2 sensor patent shenanigans: The threat was to have CBP confiscate any infringing devices at the port of entry. I also remember that multimeters infringing on Fluke's ~~design patent~~ trademark have been blocked at the port of entry:
How practical is that for something the size of a couple pill bottles? Is that something customs would actually catch at all? They seem to have other priorities these days it seems.
Even worse, the bottles are minuscule. Each dose is dissolved in like half a mL of bacteriostatic water/saline. You could fit a years supply in 25mL, or 5 tsp.
Canadian pharmacies can legally sell it and Americans (and all other foreigners for that matter) traveling there can legally buy it.
Unlike the criminal law, Novo nordisk would have to go after every single person individually and make the case that they are infringing the American patent. This is all without the help of the police or customs, as a private civil matter.
Obviously this would be uneconomic for Novo Nordisk. You can't search anyone as you don't have any warrants, as it's not a crime and then even if you could, you need to prove that the drugs they have on them were purchased in Canada.
Foreigners who currently pay a huge amount of money would only have to make one trip to Canada in however long period it takes for the drugs to expire. I know I would certainly make a day trip if I was using this drug.
Intellectual property law firms offer services to renew and watch registrations like this worldwide and it would have been very simple to have a contract with one of them.