Patent Law

Zemplar

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

The laugh riot of Abbott and Costello quieted when years of drinking rot-gut begat Costello chronic kidney failure. Interstellar quasar TV transmission from earth to Qo'noS, Klingon home world, made the comedy duo a cross-species phenomenon. Few humans could so touch the funny bone of Klingons, owing partly to the fact that the Klingon funny bone is quite tiny.

The Klingons themselves having been genetically altered by human Augments, and also fond of rot-gut brew, were able to concoct treatment for Costello's disease, using the ground dung of the Klingon horned beetle, the zemplar. Zemplar are popular pets for Klingon younglings, especially adolescent female.

Worf volunteered for the mission to deliver Zemplar to Abbott, which by that time had started his own laboratory. But too late. Costello passed.

Still, Zemplar developed into a blockbuster drug. So much so that the Romulan Teva started to make generic copies. So Abbott has sued Israel-based Teva for infringing 5,246,925 and 5,587,497.

This is not the first patent battle for Abbott and Teva. The Vulcan-derived TriCor is also being litigated for patent infringement. Meanwhile, Abbott forked out $184 million to resolve allegations by Teva, Impax, and certain drugstores that it conspired to launch frivolous patent suits to staunch competition for TriCor. Abbott's Ferengi marketing executive had no comment on that.

Worf is sometimes misspelled as WARF by hapless humanoids lacking a tlhlngan Hol (Klingon language) dictionary, and confused with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on November 25, 2008 (boomark / email).