Posted by jack smith on May 9, 2003, at 12:17:57
In reply to Remeron, generic ?!, posted by stjames on May 9, 2003, at 10:52:35
Well, I will respond to this because others may also be curious about why certain drugs go generic faster than others. Patents last for 20 years from the application date (used to be 17 years after approval of the patent by the Patent office).
Drug companies often have their compounds patented years before ever getting FDA approval for their release to the public. Mirtazipine was therefore probably patented back in the '80s but was not approved for use until the '90s.
This is actually quite common, drug companies patent a whole bunch of exploratory compounds that never get released and often get released for completely different things than they thought they would be useful for. Best example of this is Viagra--it was developed as a liver drug I think but it turned out to be useless for that but it had a great side effect which is now its clinical indication.
JACK
> I picked up my Remeron yesterday and they had
> generic Remeron. AFAICT, Remeron came out in the late 90's, so it should not have run through its patent yet. What gives ?
poster:jack smith
thread:225378
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030505/msgs/225402.html