Friday, October 17, 2008

PHARMACEUTICAL AD FOR ER-DYSFUNCTION FALSELY CLAIMS A PATENT

The August 25th San Francisco Chronicle, page A5, had an ad (one in many other newspapers, I suspect), from the BostonMedicalGroup.com for their proprietary process for treating performance dysfunction for those men for which the new pills don't work. One sentence caught my eye: "The secret to Boston Medical Group's success lies in The BMG Method, a proprietary treatment process for Urecktyle Dysfunction that recently received a U.S. patent. The group is the only physician network known to have acquired such a patent, ..." But what is the patent number? The ad doesn't mention it, I couldn't find it on the BMG Web site, nor could I find any patent assigned to Boston Medical Group, or two of its doctors mentioned in the ad - Barry Buffman and Alan Sperber. I am always suspicious of small companies touting patents in medical ads, because the existence of the patent means little medically, and it is all the more suspicious when it is so hard to find the actual patent.