Pharma patents uniquely discourage innovation—large firms spend profits on lawyers and patent tinkering NOT R&D

Finally, the broken patent system also provides a toxic incentive for pharmaceutical companies. The ability to extract year after year of hyper-profits from a handful of blockbuster drugs pushes companies to spend heavily on drug modification and lawyers who’ll protect their patent monopoly instead of investing in genuinely new drug research. In 2021, Keytruda alone made up 48 percent of Merck’s profits; Eylea 48 percent of Regeneron/Bayer’s; and Humira 40 percent of AbbVie’s. Feldman’s research found that once a drug company starts down the patent abuse road, it tends to rely on it more and more as time passes.