Yes, the patent won't be valid for Canada, but you can't import a product into the US which would infringe on a US patent.
So, though there may be a small amount that would slip through the cracks, it isn't as if anyone in the US can now manufacture Semaglutide and distribute it.
Canada is such a small market, that many companies don't bother. Though, for the cost, it seems ridiculous a company as big as Novo didn't pay the $500...that may even have been in Canadian dollars. :)
Ozempic did about US$2bn of revenue in 2024 in Canada.
Canadian pharmacies can legally sell it and Americans (and all other foreigners for that matter) traveling there can legally buy it.
Unlike the criminal law, Novo nordisk would have to go after every single person individually and make the case that they are infringing the American patent. This is all without the help of the police or customs, as a private civil matter.
Obviously this would be uneconomic for Novo Nordisk. You can't search anyone as you don't have any warrants, as it's not a crime and then even if you could, you need to prove that the drugs they have on them were purchased in Canada.
Foreigners who currently pay a huge amount of money would only have to make one trip to Canada in however long period it takes for the drugs to expire. I know I would certainly make a day trip if I was using this drug.
Intellectual property law firms offer services to renew and watch registrations like this worldwide and it would have been very simple to have a contract with one of them.
Well, about that... Aren't all variants of medications like these prescription-only? And in Canada you can't fill a foreign prescription without having a local doctor sign off on it, as far as I know.
This is how medical tourism typically works.
I don't think that's quite right. One of the things that CBP does is inspect incoming shipments, and confiscate IP-infringing things.
Think about the recent Apple Watch SpO2 sensor patent shenanigans: The threat was to have CBP confiscate any infringing devices at the port of entry. I also remember that multimeters infringing on Fluke's ~~design patent~~ trademark have been blocked at the port of entry:
https://hackaday.com/2014/03/19/multimeters-without-a-countr...
US consumers would have to travel to Canada for injections which isn't practical unless you live on a border town.
It's unlikely to meet the bar for personal importation as you say.
That probably won't stop people from trying. There's already a huge market for illegal compounds and GPL-1 drugs are available alongside the usual testosterone and other steroids.
> There's already a huge market for illegal compounds and GPL-1 drugs are available alongside the usual testosterone and other steroids.
The peptide and oils markets are both big, but largely separate -- the peptides folks don't seem to want to be associated with oils. Within peptides, GLP1s definitely dominate, though the other options are pretty popular. In my experience it seems like GLP1s are kind of a "gateway peptide" -- a lot of folks start with a GLP1 on the gray market, and then start to branch out and try the other options available.
As a Canadian national in the US I wouldn't even attempt doing this in the current political climate.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/industry/import-basics/personal-importat...
Also, let's be real, anyone in the northeast could be there in a few hours driving. New York City is about 7 hours away from Ottawa, for example.
I’ve ended up at the border crossing from Niagara Falls to Buffalo by accident before. I was glad when they let me make a U-turn.
Probably depends on enforcement, price delta, and various other variables.
e.g. something like a quarter of smartphones sold in Brazil are smuggled in, more than a small amount slipping through the cracks.
Technically true, but in practice you can often get it across the border in personal-dose-level quantities without getting caught.
> You can even find a letter where their lawyers send a refund request for the 2017 maintenance fee ($250) because Novo apparently wanted some more time to see if they wanted to pay it.
> On the same date in 2019, the office sent a letter saying that “The fee payable to maintain the rights accorded by the above patent was not received by the prescribed due date. . .”
> By that time it was $450 with the late fee added, but that was apparently too much for Novo. They had a one year grace period to make it up, and apparently never did, so their patent lapsed in Canada. And as the Canadian authorities remind them, “Once a patent has lapsed it cannot be revived”.
Impressive failure for "the second-largest semaglutide market in the world."
One's got to find ways to feel like the good guy when working for Big Pharma . That's probably not what happened but it's nice imagining it.
Pharma companies are really nothing more than holders of time-limited, expensive, exclusive IP. The number one priority should be to maintain those protections as long as possible. How could any patent be allowed to lapse, even if there was limited commercial value, let alone, a blockbuster drug making billions?
The cartharsis comes in knowing that them firing the innocent just keeps them repeating the mistake.
That's exactly how things like this happen. No one has responsibility, thinking it's someone else's problem, so no one bothers to do the needful.
Or it’s in someone’s political interest to let the fuckup play out.
A failure like this isn't just one dude forgetting, its a system failure where policies and checks failed. If it is solely up to one person that is a failure in and of itself.
I was surprised Science didn't discuss this option. However, reader comments in Science do comment on this possibility.
The idea is that letting the patent lapse would avoid getting regulated by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.
I know several people working at NN, and it's quite chaotic and political, so I wouldn't rule out an internal oversight.
Not really. It doesn't look like a blog, and it's not a person/org's specific blog post. It's just called "blog" in a breadcrumb somewhere, which most people won't read. It's actual a guest editorial, but still - doesn't really look like one.
Yeah, it really is, even if what's linked to is one post rather than the entire blog.
His stuff pops up here often enough. He really does blog at Science. Has for years and years.
If you have a background in chemistry, it's fairly accessible (i.e., he very rarely talks about anything in a depth that an undergrad chem major would have trouble understanding - which, given that most chemists start branching off very quickly in grad school, is roughly the appropriate depth for writing intended for a general chemistry audience, since it's the last common knowledge level).
The top of the sidebar describes what "In the Pipeline" is.
> Nordisk has rejected any suggestion that the loss of its Canadian semaglutide patent was a simple mistake. In a statement cited by Fortune, the company stressed that its intellectual property strategy is “carefully considered at a global level,” indicating intentionality rather than a blunder.
> Legal analysts believe the decision was deliberate. Steven Shape, IP Chair at Omnus Law, noted that the annual $250–$450 fee was negligible compared to the looming expiration of both data exclusivity and patent protection in January 2026. Shape argued the lapse was likely “a clear decision by Novo,” not an error.
> That interpretation is bolstered by the company’s simultaneous filing of a Certificate of Supplementary Protection (CSP) in Canada, suggesting Novo valued extended market exclusivity beyond the patent’s life. But because the underlying patent lapsed early, the CSP cannot take effect.
If the interpretation is bolstered by the company’s filing for CSP, but they were ineligible for CSP because they let the patent expire doesn't that imply it was an error?
I'd never heard of CSPs before, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi... has some details. They seem to be a patent extension in all but name.
It might not be as nonsensical as the alternative, but I still dont understand how the CSP filing makes it any less likely letting the patent lapse was a mistake.
I know you're not the one making the argument but it really is rediculously silly to argue that it must be an intentional action to not do something because in the past the company wanted to do the thing. While duh, a mistake by definition is something you dont want to do.
I would agree. The so-called bus factor has been common knowledge in the industries in question for literal decades now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
> An early instance of this sort of query was when Michael McLay publicly asked, in 1994, what would happen to the Python language if Guido van Rossum were to be hit by a bus.
http://legacy.python.org/search/hypermail/python-1994q2/1040...
There is also a possibility of a paying a late fee and, finally, there is also a reinstatement process.
NN could have missed all these, but they would have to be a really dysfunctional organization. Definitely not a low bus-factor situation.
I don’t know what kind of sequence of events could lead to this outcome at NN, but perhaps they were hoist by their own petard. I’m reminded of the “money on the ground” joke involving two economists, which is semi-famous in these parts.
To wit:
> Economist 1: Look, there’s $20 on the ground!
> Economist 2: No there isn’t. If there were, someone would have picked it up already.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/19/money-on-the-ground/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029044
Perhaps the folks at NN are so busy picking up (billions of) dollars that they neglect the dimes on the ground that it would cost to comply with these seemingly trivial, even menial functional requirements of keeping their money printer running.
I’m honestly as befuddled by this brouhaha as anyone. This is a monumental failure of multiple entire business units to perform the core competencies of their jobs. That said, I could honestly believe that the number of people whose job it is (or perhaps was) to worry about the patent expiry at all, let alone be aware of the repeated communiques from the Canadian patent office, is quite low. I would further believe that the accountability dodging has only just begun behind closed doors, if the internal game of megacorporate musical chairs hasn’t already concluded well before this news broke and reached the shores of HN.
I've zero idea about anything specific to Novo Nordisk, but have enough exposure to IP in Canada to envision the above happening in other cases.
It seems much more likely to me that they did it on purpose, as they claim to have.
This isn't what that joke means.
It doesn't take a very large company for this to happen. I've seen it in a sub 50 person company. There is a task to be done but no one can do it because everyone involved is waiting for someone else to do something. It's like a Mexican standoff.
Boggles my mind.
The foundation has an objective of providing support for scientific, humanitarian and social purposes. . . . In 2024, the foundation distributed a total of DKK 10.1 billion (approx. $1.39 billion) and paid out DKK 6.9 billion ($1.08 billion) in grants. [0]
Large pharma makes strategic bets on several drugs, some initiated in house, others acquired, but they all just go through further optimization and testing before it is approved.
Huge RnD is required even if drug is “simply acquired”
Even in companies with a strong CEO who is, in fact, lording over everyone, mechanisms will be built to make sure said CEO's bad decisions were group decisions, and that most of the people around him agreed.
(Novo hired _way_ too many people because 'infinite money')
I bet many Americans would travel to Canada to buy it there (despite the legality concerns). The medications lasts 2 years in a refrigerator.
I also wonder if only the "active ingredients" need to be FDA approved, and the packaging is irrelevant?
More over, you can order and ship medicine, including ozempic and zepbound, using American prescription from Canadian online pharmacies. For some drugs it’s quite cheaper than paying American prices.
But a smaller fraction.
If you’re paranoid, route it via the UAE. All my European and Indian shippers are doing that for tariff-free pricing. (Personal stuff. I’ll pay a customs duty if I get it, of course.)
So why not.
As a European I'm as critical of the US government as can be and their president has definitely been bought, but there are already several countries that have some training facilities and military personnel in the US.
Calling it a foreign military base is really unnecessarily hyperbolic. And given the amount of military bases that the US have on foreign land, the outrage also seems a bit misplaced.
For their own security protocols, among other reasons, many partner nations prefer to have a small area set up, think of it like a consulate, where their people stay within their own jurisdiction, rather than a hotel. The UAE is setting up such a place for its pilots.
That is all.
This isn’t a force-projection military base on US soil.
(Honest question. I don't know.)
You probably have to disolve it in very clean water in a very clean container. Do you have to match the salinity and pH with the proprties of the blood? How much time must you stir it to ensure it's completely disolved? Do you have to add something to increase/reduce viscosity? Some alcohol in case there are a few bacterias or improve solubility? How long does the small homemade batch last in the fridge?
IIUC there is another version in pills, they may have a longer shelf life, or not. But ask a medical doctor before taking a ramdom medicine.
Realistically the cost of semiglutide in generic form means you could fly return every 90 days (personal import restriction for perscription meds) and still save $1000 every 3 months (3x$500 monthly - return flight - generic cost).
Multiple doses can be mixed and stored in the fridge for 4-6 weeks.
Why travel? There are thousands of ads on TV, radio, and the internet each day for Canadian pharmacies that promise to ship whatever you need to the U.S.
If anyone has worked in a big, hidebound corporation, they are familiar with the "That's not my job" quandary.
I guess they think some other production patent will let them maintain exclusivity without it being a patent on the drug itself?
https://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic-cipo/cpd/eng/patent/26...
And during most of that time, they were still protected by 'data exclusivity' which means that any generic producer could not get approved without doing their own clinical trials, until 8 years had passed.
So they gave up some period of exclusivity in return for being able to charge a higher price when they still had a monopoly.
I am not an expert.
Here's one about the price control on patented drugs: https://www.torys.com/our-latest-thinking/publications/2024/...
That is significantly cheaper than the US, and cheaper than other GLP-1 class drugs up here, arguably reasonable. Is the supposition that they would have been forced to charge even less? If so, why are their competitors who kept their patents not charging more?
Counterpoint: Mounjaro/Tirzepatide did keep their patent protection. They are able to, and do, charge significantly more.
Compounding isn't allowed in Canada, currently, so I assume you are talking about the US? Compounding Ozempic in the US wasn't a thing in 2018 when this patent was released in Canada, so not sure what one has to do with the other.
What are you getting at in reference to the argument that the patent was released intentionally in order to charge a higher price?
How does this work? Why/when would compounding not be allowed?
I'm not sure why you think that, compounding is allowed, I live right be a compounding pharmacy. And confirmed it's legal through google.
It's also relatively common for toddlers who need special doses, or for people who can't swallow pills and need liquid formulations.
Compounding is normal.
I was making no judgement on compounding generally.
Most people are using private drug insurance in Canada.
The only thing that changes with Costco is you can get the auto-injector version for that price, instead of vials.
Most of what time? The patent just expired a few months ago. Generics are now ramping up because the patent expired, not because of some hypothetical eight year clinical trials. And for that matter, generics of existing ingredients and dosages do not have to repeat clinical trials anyways, which is one of the big reasons generics are a lot less expensive.
This hypothesis seems retconned and completely at odds with the actual facts. Not least that there has been absolutely nothing exceptional about the pricing of their product in Canada, which has always been one of the cheaper pricings worldwide.
Sounds like potentially a good thing?
?
>Novo Nordisk did not file for a renewal because of a mistake, or someone going on vacation, or anything like that.
>Novo Nordisk decided that the additional years of patent protection were not worth it compared to the advantage of the drug no longer being under the jurisdiction of the PMPRB <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patented_Medicine_Prices_Revie...>. Whether that decision was financially correct in light of GLP-1's subsequent application to weight loss, I do not know. However, again, it was not a silly mistake on Novo Nordisk's part.
See, for example, Prilosec (Omeprazole) switching from prescription to OTC.
This year they already did an analysis to include Ozempic, but it was denied, probably because of the cost difference...
But they were trying on justice to extend the patent...
That said, I believe it will go even further.
To get medication through the SUS, you only need a prescription from a doctor. Any doctor. So even if the SUS itself don't prescribe, you can just find a doctor who will do it...
But, likely SUS will prescribe anyway. Rio mayor:
"Rio will be a city where there will be no more chubby people; everyone will be taking Ozempic at family clinics." "Said the mayor, adding that he has already taken the medication. He claimed to have lost 30kg with the medication."
sadly rio is exporting them.
Not in all cases. They can and will make the patient and multiple doctors fill out half a dozen forms to "justify" the use of an expensive medication.
Probably won't happen at first, politicians need to make good on their promises after all. But it will happen. I just got done filling out the forms for a COPD medication that's much cheaper than semaglutide. Only political intervention can save it.
But any doctor can do it, not just SUS doctors. You know the country we live in. Private doctors will do the prescription... Actually, to buy it you already need a prescription, and yet, even skinny healthy folks buy ozempic.
And to get in the SUS, it's pretty simple here in Paraná at least (and as a SUS user). The worst that happens, it's that for expensive/controlled medicines, they centralize into a single public pharmacy in the city center, and you need to schedule a day/time, and bring the ID - don't even need to be the user, you can ask anyone you want to get it if the prescription and ID it's there.
Which is why for my cheap medicine, I prefer to buy it. Not worth for me going to city center only for 30 pills that cost R$ 15.
Still, after dapagliflozin I'm ready to believe it. There's also the fact semaglutide will straight up win votes for politicians that provide it.
I expect it to mirror the evolution of dapagliflozin in SUS: it will be offered unconditionally at first, then as they start to feel the weight of the costs involved they'll start imposing conditions and forcing patients to go through endless bureaucracy to get their medication. Age requirements, comorbity requirements, obnoxious paperwork that "justifies" the need for such a drug. Oh I'll gladly fill out those forms...
Also, Rio mayor already said he will just give to everyone basically lol
You also need to remind that on a public health care system, having less obese people means you'll spend less on health care.
... an hour's wage? a week? a month? annual?
Minimum wage in brazil is 280/month. I don't know how much of it would be taken by taxes, but even if it's 0 then ozempic in Brazil still costs almost 70% of that amount each month.
$(recurring dose of drug) ~= $(recurring income)
However much you need per unit time period, compared to how much you make in that time period.
The definition is independent of time.
There’s one wrinkle though, legally importing prescription drugs from Canada isn’t really allowed in the US/UK AFAIK. HIMS is probably feverishly figuring out how to do that right now.
Shameless plug:
https://glp1guide.substack.com/p/another-glp1-generic-launch...
Also somewhat separately, injectable GLP1s are about to be upstaged by oral variants — orfoglipron for Eli Lilly and the Wegovy Pill for Novo.
I believe that this gets a new patent, and will probably be a huge seller.
Both companies have thus far been unable to really stop compounding pharmacies and/or gray market suppliers from replicating though, and price negotiation with the government is definitely going to happen (Trump recently announced wanting $150 GLP1s, Novo's lawsuit against medicare price negotiation failed)... I do not have much faith in their ability to protect their pricing power for very long, which unfortunate for them is probably what's best for humanity and is very well known at this point.
So yeah, I expect the pill form to be a huge seller!
One bit of evidence for this: SARMS are huge in the bodybuilding as "gateway steroids". They don't work, they have bad side effects, but hey, they're oral.
You can use US prescription at online Canadian pharmacy and legally ship to US. This is how a lot of people save on drugs.
Looking at the original interview on Endpoints, Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor says this about Brazil:
In Brazil, the biggest prescribers are dentists. Everyone says, “Why dentists?” They do aesthetic work, and then you have your Botox, and then you want a bikini body. It’s behaving like an OTC consumer brand. Imagine selling this, rather than $300, at $50. Anybody over the age of 40 in Brazil will probably want to be on that.
But he doesn't explain how they got around the patents. Another comment on HN says they expire in July 2026, but can anyone explain why the patents expire so soon in Brazil?
2. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
But note that the patent was only granted in 2019, it took 13 years. They went to court last year, but the justice (as far as I know) has continued to follow the precedent that the original filing date applies.
So they went to the federal government to try to change the law, but the government has refused so far.
The INPI (Brazilian Patent Office) used to take a VERY long time to register/grant patents. It's faster now (about 4 years on average), but it's still slow.
But I'm seeing here that in the US it was 2017. So not that different from 2019 anyway.
PS: Brazil also have several local labs focused on generics, and besides this, there's also state-owned lab, Fiocruz, who makes vaccines and medicines as well, several of them, to distribute though SUS.
In Brazil by the constitution, everyone has the right of health, so if the public health care (SUS) don't distribute, you can sue the governament and get the medicine. So there's a big incentive for the governament to make patents expire as soon as possible to have generics and include on SUS.
e.g Fiocruz manufacture PrEP, and started now PrEP injection (Cabotegravir).
Many seniors get cheaper medicine from Canada. That might become harder https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/18/deminimis...
No paywall: https://archive.ph/nT0Jl
Oh well, at least we in Canada get more generic drug variants. Thanks!
Another comment here mentioned that patents in Canada come with strings on pricing. So it's possible there was an actual trade-off that was considered here.
Hopefully this patent SNAFU makes up for 1% of that monumental screw job.
The price has nothing to do with Novo Nordisk's distribution of it last century.
They still do an enormous amount of charity, though activities of the foundation are probably highly localised to Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Nordisk_Foundation
All with their own patent situation, of course.
Kind of crazy considering how many people have diabetes.
Everyone’s path is a little different. What is only a little difficult for some might be downright impossible for others (or feel that way).
General advice that would work for 95% of people shouldn't be criticised because it doesn't address the other 5%. If people did it then there'd be far more money in the system to pay for usefully targetted specialist treatment for those people.
The emotional/psychological side is important, because the person must make long term changes in their lifestyle.
People tend to over-eat for a reason, and typically it is a reaction to stress or some emotional/psychological need which isn’t being met.
There’s a book called “The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet” which promotes intermittent fasting to lose weight, and I think it’s on the right track, although the book recommends taking in calories only during a one hour period each day, which for me was too extreme.
I do think it’s beneficial to fast for at least 6 hours once a day, if possible. It’s good for your blood sugar as well as your gut. It can give you more energy and help you feel more like exercising.
As it is it's just corporate welfare - enforcing lucrative market monopoly for an equivalent of a steak dinner for two.
paulpauper•3mo ago
jasongill•3mo ago
OutOfHere•3mo ago
js2•3mo ago
https://www.fda.gov/industry/import-basics/personal-importat...
OutOfHere•3mo ago
tredre3•3mo ago
Okay but your statement was that there's "nothing illegal about it". You now agree that it's illegal, you're just unlikely to get caught. And if you are, you'll just lose that purchase and not face any legal consequences.
OutOfHere•3mo ago
Afaik, people hide it only for some controlled substances.
Next time you play a random music video on YouTube, please look at the number of federal copyright laws you're violating. Also, if you ever drive from one state to another, check if you have any plant food with you because crossing state lines with any plant material may be illegal. And I need not remind of marijuana which we know remains highly illegal at the federal level.
kelnos•3mo ago
That's false: it is entirely illegal.
Whether or not you can get away with it due to lax enforcement, or whether or not there are any real penalties for getting caught... that's a separate issue that has nothing to do with what you said.
OutOfHere•3mo ago
Additionally, some laws are not even written clearly, and in fact are intentionally written vaguely.
rootusrootus•3mo ago
Hilift•3mo ago
dlcarrier•3mo ago