Aspirin in Canada: The First Quarter-Century

Aspirin (ASA) was a state-of-the-art prescription drug introduced in 1899 by Bayer of Germany that also became a very popular household remedy. Bayer owned the trade name and could sue for infringement. When World War I started, Canadians hoped to produce ASA locally and call it aspirin, but Ottawa would not cancel the trademark. In the United States, American law gave the trade name to the public after the patent expired (1917), because there was no other name for the public to use. By the end of the war, the US factories were making "aspirin" freely and selling it to Canada, where aspirin production was stillborn. The Canadian trademark was cancelled (1923), but the Supreme Court, honouring priority of ownership, restored Aspirin to Bayer in 1924. The career of Aspirin and the dispute over its names foreshadow the trajectory of the pharmaceutical industry in this country: Canada became and has largely remained a producer of generic drugs and host to subsidiaries of companies headquartered elsewhere -including Bayer, which is once again a German firm. It is why we spell Aspirin with a capital A.