{"id":26512,"date":"2025-04-02T18:40:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T22:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26512"},"modified":"2025-04-02T20:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T00:29:00","slug":"senate-must-support-strong-patent-rights-not-erode-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26512\/senate-must-support-strong-patent-rights-not-erode-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Must Support Strong Patent Rights, Not Erode Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we at CFIF often highlight<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 Our Founding Fathers considered IP so important that they explicitly protected it in the text of Article I of the United States Constitution.<\/p>\n

Strong patent rights also explain how the U.S. accounts for an incredible two-thirds<\/em> of all new lifesaving drugs<\/a> introduced worldwide.<\/p>\n

Elected officials must therefore work to protect<\/em> strong IP and patent rights, not undermine<\/em> them.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, several anti-patent bills<\/a> currently before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee this week threaten to do exactly that.\u00a0 Those bills include S. 1040, which rests on the myth of a “product-hopping” problem under U.S. law.<\/p>\n

As CFIF has explained<\/a>, however, bills like S. 1040 and acceptance of the “product-hopping” falsity would dangerously threaten U.S. innovation in an increasingly competitive world economy:<\/p>\n

Myth:<\/em>\u00a0 Anti-patent activists employ this deceptive term when a manufacturer introduces a new, different drug that may compete with or replace\u00a0 older version and provide expanded patient choice and access.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Fact:<\/em>\u00a0 U.S. patent law rightfully grants patent rights for new and useful improvements to existing drugs.\u00a0 That incentivizes research and development and the multiple years of risk-taking and experimentation needed to make existing products even better.\u00a0 Such improvements open the door for reduced side effects, lower dosage requirements, improved potency, extended effectiveness or alternative uses.\u00a0 Additionally, as the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated, it\u2019s 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\u2019re far less likely to be developed, resulting in fewer options for patients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We cannot jeopardize America’s status as the world’s leader in innovation, including pharmaceutical innovation and availability<\/a> on the basis of anti-patent myths.\u00a0 Hopefully wiser minds on the Senate Judiciary Committee prevail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Our Founding Fathers considered IP so important that they explicitly protected it in the text of Article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2871,2872,1442,5283,4805],"class_list":["post-26512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-intellectual-property","tag-ip","tag-patent","tag-patent-myths","tag-pharmaceuticals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26512"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26517,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26512\/revisions\/26517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}