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Some "life science" companies, in particular pharmaceutical, can extend the life of their patents by 5 years in some jurisdictions (at least here in Europe). T

Some "life science" companies, in particular pharmaceutical, can extend the life of their patents by 5 years in some jurisdictions (at least here in Europe). This is called a Supplementary Protection Certificate [0] and is subject to certain conditions (e.g. clinical trials took a long time). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certificate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi... EDIT: typo

monochromatic 8y ago
It's not exactly an extension though--it's that they didn't get the benefit of the early part of their patent term because of regulatory delays, so they get to pad the back end to make up for that.