30 June 2017 - Canada’s Supreme Court on Friday struck down rules making it easy for generic drug firms to overturn patents granted to pharmaceutical companies, a decision that removes an irritant in the run-up to talks on NAFTA.

The ruling spells an end to the so-called Promise Doctrine. This allowed a patent on a drug to be ruled invalid if a court decided the medication had not lived up to all the promises that a firm had made to be granted the patent in the first place.

U.S. companies, complaining that this meant it was far too easy for them to lose patents on drugs they had spent a fortune on developing, wanted the doctrine to be raised as part of the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

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