Provisional patent applications are a way to establish and protect a “date of invention” or “priority filing date” for one year. The provisional patent application was created to provide inventors with a way to begin protecting their inventions. A provisional patent application provides PharmaCyte 12 months to prepare a full patent application during which it can label its inventions as “patent pending.” It also enables PharmaCyte to establish an early effective filing date for a patent.
The family of patents that deal with the subject matter of the new patent application are set to expire on March 27, 2017. The new patent application is designed to continue patent protection of PharmaCyte’s therapy for cancerous tumors. It is not an extension of the existing patents. A new patent for PharmaCyte’s cancer therapy, if granted by the USPTO, will provide another 20 years of patent protection from the date of the filing of this Provisional Patent Application – March 21, 2017.
PharmaCyte therapy for pancreas cancer is already protected. PharmaCyte’s pancreas cancer therapy was designated an orphan drug and listed in the official registry of medicinal products for rare diseases by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 17, 2014. This orphan drug status assures marketing exclusivity for PharmaCyte’s pancreas cancer therapy in the U.S. for 7 years after market approval by the FDA. Similarly, PharmaCyte has orphan drug status in the European Union (EU) for its pancreas cancer therapy. This designation provides 10 years of marketing exclusivity in all countries in the EU following approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
