Supreme Court rejects Merck's appeal on Fosamax case

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Oct. 17 that it rejected Merck & Co.'s appeal of a ruling that the patent on its blockbuster, once-weekly osteoporosis drug Fosamax will expire a decade earlier than expected. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer did not take part in the case. That typically happens when a justice owns a company's stock. [One recalls the earlier confusion between Merck & Co. and Merck KGaA in the Merck v. Integra case.]

The problem for Merck in the Fosamax case was claim drafting that was somewhat unclear. Merck in its petition for cert said the Supreme Court should consider the practice by the appeals court of using its review of legal issues to reweigh evidence and to substitute its views for the factual findings of the district court judge.

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Update on August 20, 2006.

In a search on Fosamax patent on Google, one will not find any entries for IPBiz in the first 10 pages (who looks at 10 pages (or more) of Google results anyway?) but you will find hits for PatentBaristas and PatentProspector on page 1. Is it the content or is it the linking? Just thinking about the impact of PageRank.