A stronger patent system guarantees higher prices and stifles competition.
Mintz 23 [Evan Mintz, oversees content creation for Arnold Ventures. He previously served as deputy opinion editor for the Houston Chronicle, where he wrote editorials, solicited and edited op-eds, curated online opinion, and spearheaded the political endorsement process. Evan was a 2017 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for a series on gun laws, gun culture, and gun tragedy. He also served as interim editor of the editorial board team that was a finalist for the 2018 Burl Osborne Award for Editorial Leadership. Evan is a licensed attorney and received his law degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, where he served as editorial board editor of the Cardozo Jurist. He also worked as executive editor at the Rice Thresher, the student newspaper at Rice University, where he received a bachelor's degree in history and the Bobb Award for writing and journalism. “How a Broken Patent System Contributes to Unaffordable Prescription Drugs,” October 6, 2023. https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/how-a-broken-patent-system-contributes-to-unaffordable-prescription-drugs]
If you invent and successfully patent a product in the United States, it is typically protected from competition for 20 years. This intellectual property system, which is established in the U.S. Constitution, is intended to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by rewarding innovation with a government-granted monopoly for a set period of time.
But today, drug manufacturers are exploiting loopholes in the system to extend their monopolies and stifle competition long beyond that 20-year timeline, which results in high and rising prescription drugs prices and undermines the very purpose of patent law. These anticompetitive behaviors contribute to a status quo of unaffordable prescription drugs where about a quarter of Americans report struggling to afford the drugs they are prescribed.
We talked to Wayne Brough, the policy director for technology and innovation at the center-right think tank the R Street Institute, about this critical but complex policy issue.
Brough tackled patent reform in his recent report, Patent Reform and Pharmaceuticals: The Key to Lower Drug Prices, which looks at how drug companies’ strategic patenting practices harm competition and consumer welfare and identifies potential legislative and regulatory reforms that could improve the entire patent system. He has also called for bipartisan action around patent reform, publishing an op-ed with Priti Krishtel of the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge (I‑MAK), which reminds lawmakers that patent abuses that lead to the outlandish cost of prescription drugs are not a Republican or Democratic issue. “When the patent system fails, we all suffer,” they write.