Report: Patent Law Stifles Drug Innovation
Under existing patent law, these "me-too" drugs can receive new patents separate from the already existing drugs they are based on, allowing drug companies to make substantial profits without signficantly enhancing the quality of drugs available on the market. According to the report, "the ability of drug manufacturers to easily obtain patents for minor changes to products, or to receive patent exclusivity for new uses of existing products, have reduced incentives to develop new drugs."
Commenting on the report, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that existing patent law allows drug companies to drive up their profits at the expense of patients needing innovative treatments. "The findings in this new GAO report," said Senator Durbin, "raise serious questions about the pharmaceutical industry claims that there is a connection between new drug development and the soaring price of drugs already on the market. Most troubling is the notion that pharmaceutical industry profits are coming at the expense of consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer new drugs."
In his own statement on the GAO report, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) touted a bill he has co-sponsored with Senator Mike Enzi, which would provide grants to scientists focused on developing innovative drugs.
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Written By:Robert On December 21, 2006 11:08 AM Written By:Juan On December 21, 2006 11:08 PM
This is ludicrous. Though patent law may (does) have many faults, its purpose is not to guarantee that each new filing benefits humanity. The fact that new drugs with only marginal benefit are successful is a marketing issue. People are foolish to buy a drug merely because they've seen a woman on TV, walking a dog through a field of wheat, allergy-free. Can we please concentrate on fixing the (many, actual) problems with IP law, rather than using this as a platform for attacking an industry we don't like?
Remember it is all marketing.
Drugs released are based on market research of profit not on any human or health concerns.
It is simple as tha.
And then on to a military campaign of sales.
The short answer is yes, patent laws do hamper invention.
Advances in basic research in the wet sciences make this a critical period. A wide variety of new drugs will be developed over the next twenty-five years. The current patent situation clouds the waters, adding large legal expenses to the development of new drugs and to thier marketing. This is real as money is real. This uncertainty prevents research and discourages innovation. Not only does a drug have to help the patient that take it, it must offer sufficienct promise to continually feed the lawers that license and defend it.
We all rely on past innovations moment by moment in our daily lives. We cook, clean, work, and eat on the foundation of past, public domain, innovation. The purpose of patent law, in the long run, in to get more good stuff into the public domain by providing specific legal protections for a limited time to contemporary people and organizations for thier innovations. Patents and their protections exist because the alturnative is secrets and lost knowedge. Currently, the tail wags the dog, with a weak, poor, patent office and strong, well funded, legal community that sees every item moving from patent to public domain as a loss.
What's more, the report doesn't even state what this headline claims. The opinions cited include various views of the effect of patents, are ambiguous - at best - on the priority of this issue compared with the others in affecting drug approval rates, and suggest only tweaks in the patent period to possibly shift attention among drug types.
This is welcome news but long overdue. Organizations like Patients Not Patents (http://www.patientsnotpatents.org) have known this for a long time. PNP was specifically organized to fight these kinds of patents.