minister of health to maintain a patent register. this consists of patent lists submitted in respect of eligible noc-issued drugs. the minister responsible for health canada may refuse to add, or may delete, information from this patent register. each patent list is audited (for example as to whether potential inclusions are mere 'evergreening' attempts) by the office of patented medicines and liaison. reports produced by that body outline statistics relating to the maintenance of the patent register, including the number of patents filed, the number of patents accepted and rejected, and litigation resulting from the acceptance or rejection of patents for listing on the patent register. in october 2006, the canadian federal government recognized that some brand-name companies had been abusing the noc regulations. it limited their use of 'evergreening' follow-on patents by promulgating regulations that prevented any new patents they filed after a generic company had submitted an application for approval of its product from being considered in the noc regulations process. moreover, the new regulations made it clear that patents covering areas without direct therapeutic application, such as processes or intermediates, could not be used to delay generic approval. in australia, anti-evergreening amendments to the therapeutic goods act 1983 (cth)were part of the package of legislation required to be passed by the australian government as a precondition to entry into force of the australia-united states free trade agreement (ausfta). they provide that where a certificate has been given under s26b by a generic manufacturer and the patent holder wishes to claim a patent and institute infringement proceedings, he or she must first certify that the proceedings are being commenced in good faith, have reasonable prospects of success (as defined in s26c(4)) and will be conducted without unreasonable delay. if the certificate is found to be false or misleading, fines of up to $10 million apply and the cth attorney general is permitted to join the action to recoup losses to the pbs. section 26d provides that a patent holder who seeks an interlocutory injunction to prevent the marketing of the generic pharmaceutical must obtain leave from the government to do so. trips both the international federation of pharmaceutical manufacturing associations (ifpma) and the us phrma have stated that the australian anti-evergreening provisions are inconsistent with obligations under the world trade organization agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights trips article 27 which prohibits discrimination in an area of technology (in this case pharmaceuticals). the argument is that the australian anti-"linkage evergreening" legislation affects only pharmaceutical patents and is therefore discriminatory under trips. on the other hand, international trade law recognises that where a unique problem arises specifically referable only to a particular field of technology, a solution applying sui generis only to that field of technology cannot be said to be discriminatory according to the ordinary meaning and purpose of the trips agreement or the ausfta as required by article ausfta 21.9.2 (incorporating articles 31 and 32 of the vienna convention on the law of treaties (vclt). the decision of the world trade organization dispute resolution panel in canada – patent protection of pharmaceutical products case, for example, accepted that it was not inconsistent with trips to provide for distinct patent rules that responded to practical consequences of differences between fields of technology. almost all nations including the united states now have anti-evergreening legislation as part of their public health policy and none of this legislation (which is clearly targeted at a problem particular to the pharmaceutical industry) has been argued to be contrary to trips. further, there are a number of obligations imposed by the ausfta that relate to the enjoyment of patent rights for pharmaceuticals alone, including extension of the terms of a pharmaceutical patent to compensate the patent owner for unreasonable curtailment of the effective patent term as a result of the marketing approval process(17.9.8(b)). this is clearly not discriminatory because the issue of delays in enjoyment of patent rights due to the marketing approval process arises only in the context of pharmaceutical patents. future in terms of future evergreening strategies, patent holders may: seek to make incremental patentable innovations to existing products with soon-to-expire patents through the generic arm of their own company and launch early to secure market share (supragenerics), attempt to make separately patentable nanotechnology or biologic versions of such pharmaceuticals through the generic arm of their own company and launch early to secure market share, seek to exclude generic companies from the safety, quality and efficacy data they need to prepare for springboarding (early market launch after patent expiry) using trips-plus data exclusivity protections and seek to extend exclusivity on a soon-to-patent-expire-pharmaceutical by patenting a genetic test to establish potential toxicity or efficacy (pharmacogenomics).