Repatenting a medicine
<p>What does it mean that a drug was "repatented"?</p>

<p>From the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">New York Times</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to
  $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a
  decade ago, before it was repatented.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I get that it means the patients will have to pay, however, how can you re-patent something? Intuitively, I believed that once the patent expires, it's over. And that you can only patent novel inventions.</p>

<p>This refers to adding a putatively useful feature to the thing. For instance, a drug can have a certain active ingredient, and the patent on the active ingredient can expire, but you may discover a way to make the drug more effective or in some other way more useful (e.g. by reducing side-effects) by coating it with a purple wax. This product can be patented. This is the situation with Albuterol: the delivery system is new. The active ingredient is now free for the copying, but the particular combination of drug and delivery system known as Proventil is protected by patent.</p>

<p>Drugs are also (re)patented for different uses. I <a href="https://www.pharmacytimes.com/resource-centers/pain/patent-granted-for-inhaled-rapidonset-aspirin-formulation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">see</a> that two new patents were granted on uses of asprin recently (March 2019).</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>MARCH 01, 2019 Jennifer Nessel, Assistant Editor The US Patent and
  Trade Office (USPTO) has granted 2 new patents related to a novel
  inhaled rapid-onset aspirin formulation (Asprihale, OtiTopic) in
  development to treat suspected myocardial infarction (MI).</p>
</blockquote>

patents