FDA
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined the regulatory review period for HVAD ROTARY BLOOD PUMP and is publishing this notice of that determination as required by law. FDA has made the determination because of the submission of an application to the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Department of Commerce, for the extension of a patent which claims that medical device.
Further details
The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 (Pub. L. 98-417) and the Generic Animal Drug and Patent Term Restoration Act (Pub. L. 100-670) generally provide that a patent may be extended for a period of up to 5 years so long as the patented item (human drug product, animal drug product, medical device, food additive, or color additive) was subject to regulatory review by FDA before the item was marketed. Under these acts, a product’s regulatory review period forms the basis for determining the amount of extension an applicant may receive. A regulatory review period consists of two periods of time: A testing phase and an approval phase. For medical devices, the testing phase begins with a clinical investigation of the device and runs until the approval phase begins. The approval phase starts with the initial submission of an application to market the device and continues until permission to market the device is granted.
Although only a portion of a regulatory review period may count toward the actual amount of extension that the Director of USPTO may award (half the testing phase must be subtracted as well as any time that may have occurred before the patent was issued), FDA’s determination of the length of a regulatory review period for a medical device will include all of the testing phase and approval phase as specified in 35 U.S.C. 156(g)(3)(B). FDA has approved for marketing the medical device HVAD ROTARY BLOOD PUMP.
HVAD Rotary Blood Pump is indicated for use as a bridge to cardiac transplantation in patients who are at risk of death from refractory end-stage left ventricular heart failure. Subsequent to this approval, the USPTO received a patent term restoration application for HVAD Rotary Blood Pump (U.S. Patent No. 6,234,772) from HeartWare, Inc., and the USPTO requested FDA’s assistance in determining this patent’s eligibility for patent term restoration.
In a letter dated March 18, 2014, FDA advised the USPTO that this medical device had undergone a regulatory review period and that the approval of HVAD Rotary Blood Pump represented the first permitted commercial marketing or use of the product. Thereafter, the USPTO requested that FDA determine the product’s regulatory review period. FDA has determined that the applicable regulatory review period for HVAD Rotary Blood Pump is 1,667 days. Of this time, 973 days occurred during the testing phase of the regulatory review period, while 694 days occurred during the approval phase.
FDA
www.fda.gov
