Senate Must Support Strong Patent Rights, Not Erode Them
As we at CFIF often highlight, strong intellectual property (IP) rights – including patent rights – constitute a core element of “American Exceptionalism” and explain how we became the most inventive, prosperous, technologically advanced nation in human history. Our Founding Fathers considered IP so important that they explicitly protected it in the text of Article I of the United States Constitution.
Strong patent rights also explain how the U.S. accounts for an incredible two-thirds of all new lifesaving drugs introduced worldwide.
Elected officials must therefore work to protect strong IP and patent rights, not undermine them. Unfortunately, several anti-patent bills currently before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week threaten to do exactly that. Those bills include S. 1040, which rests on the myth of a “product-hopping” problem under U.S. law.
As CFIF has explained, however, bills like S. 1040 and acceptance of the “product-hopping” falsity would dangerously threaten U.S. innovation in an increasingly competitive world economy:
Myth: Anti-patent activists employ this deceptive term when a manufacturer introduces a new, different drug that may compete with or replace older version and provide expanded patient choice and access. They claim that by introducing a new product covered by new patents, biopharmaceutical manufacturers are somehow engaging in anticompetitive activity, fending off entry of generic or biosimilar competitors.
Fact: U.S. patent law rightfully grants patent rights for new and useful improvements to existing drugs. That incentivizes research and development and the multiple years of risk-taking and experimentation needed to make existing products even better. Such improvements open the door for reduced side effects, lower dosage requirements, improved potency, extended effectiveness or alternative uses. Additionally, as the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, it’s important to upgrade existing drugs to address potentially mutating viruses and diseases. Depriving pharmaceutical innovators of patent protections for those critical improvements or otherwise disincentivizing those innovations would mean they’re far less likely to be developed, resulting in fewer options for patients.
We cannot jeopardize America’s status as the world’s leader in innovation, including pharmaceutical innovation and availability on the basis of anti-patent myths. Hopefully wiser minds on the Senate Judiciary Committee prevail.