ABSTRACT
Who would have thought that an extract from a pregnant mare’s urine would hold a major market position for over 70 years? Yet Premarin—a trademark derived from PREgnant MARe’s urine-has done exactly that. Manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, now part of Pfizer, it continues to be a major player in the field of hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women. Although other pharmaceutical companies have innovated with alternative female hormone products, no one has managed to produce an exact generic copy of Premarin. Back in 1942, there were several patents protecting Premarin, all of which expired in 1971, but the extensive protection that Premarin has received over the years has come from trade secrets over the method used to extract specific hormones from the horse’s urine. At one point, there was even a theft by a competitor of the extraction process, but a court ruling forced the offender to destroy all product made by the process plus was forbidden to continue any research and development in the field of conjugated hormones. Involving patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, this case demonstrates the length to which a company will go to protect its intellectual property (IP).
