The Value of Pharmaceutical Patents & Strong Intellectual Property Protection
Table of Contents
* Overview of patent system
* Patents provide incentive to innovate
* Process of innovation is long, risky and expensive
* Patents help save lives, enhance life
* Strong IP protection is needed to ensure pharmaceutical innovation continues
* IP: The key to innovation and growth
Overview
* Abraham Lincoln said that patents “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.” But, it was not genius alone that Lincoln and our founding fathers desired from a patent system. Rather, their objective was innovation. Innovation is why we protect intellectual property.
* The founding fathers felt so strongly about the importance of innovation that patent and copyright protection is the only right expressly mentioned in the original articles of the Constitution.
* Patent protection in the United States gives inventors the exclusive right to sell an invention for up to 20 years before others may copy and sell it. However, the effective patent life, which only begins to run when the patent is granted and the invention can be marketed, is closer to 18 ½ years. For pharmaceuticals, the effective patent life is actually closer to 11 or 12 years since federal law requires a company to test its product for safety and efficacy and secure regulatory approval before marketing it, a process that can take years.
* Patents are a kind of agreement in which an inventor is given a limited period of time of exclusivity to make and sell a product incorporating an invention in exchange for agreeing to make his or her invention public, thus enabling and encouraging the continuation of scientific discovery.
Read the rest of Innovation.org’s pharmaceutical patent paper (pdf).
