Big pharma hates the PTAB.
Moss and Iyawemi ’24 [Alex Moss is the executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute; Timi Iwayemi is a research director at the Revolving Door Project; The American Prospect; 3/29/2024; “Senators’ Latest Attempt to Enrich Big Pharma Must Not Prevail,” https://prospect.org/power/2024-03-29-senators-latest-attempt-enrich-big-pharma/]//LASA-AB
The currently proposed bill would protect these wrongly granted patents by restricting access to the only mechanism the public has for challenging them outside of federal court: the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Congress deliberately created the PTAB to make it easier, cheaper, and more efficient to invalidate wrongly granted patents. And it has been a success: 46 percent of patents challenged at the PTAB have been found invalid in whole or part.
Naturally, Big Pharma hates this board. Gutting government capacity with the elimination of PTAB would only allow for an explosion of wrongly granted patents, which are crucial to pharma’s ability to block competition and lock in exorbitant prices for decades.