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I'm not a patent lawyer, but I fail to see why this would be the case.

If the old version was held by someone else, would it then also be open for the public ?

As far as I can tell, patents pretty much stand on their own.

They were wanting a new patent for a slightly improved version of their drug. They held the patent for the previous version which expired.

Since they were fighting so hard for a new patent, I was wondering if such a patent would affect a generic drug made from the pervious version.