This new post by Claire Laporte appears on the Health Affairs Blog as part of a series stemming from the Fourth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 29, 2016.
Ever since the first patent was issued in 1790, the United States has had a single patent law to protect inventions in all fields. Over the past three decades, that law has been strained to the breaking point in covering both the life sciences and other technologies.
On the life sciences side, patents protect platform technologies as well as specific products and are important at every stage of a product’s life cycle. Many scientific breakthroughs arise from federally funded research in universities and other institutions. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, these institutions license the resulting patents to companies, often start-ups, which develop the technology until it is ready to be marketed.
During the many years of the development process, companies need to attract investment, and investors often assess the merits of the patent portfolio as an indicator of the ultimate strength of the company. Once a product is released to the market, patents still matter; each day of patent protection for a blockbuster drug is worth millions. Patent litigation in the life sciences is typically between competitors and reflects an effort by one of those competitors to maintain its exclusivity. […]
Read the full post here.
