Are American Drugmakers Under Patent Abuse?
I-MAK predicted less expensive generic and biosimilar versions of the rheumatoid arthritis medications Enbrel and Humira from Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) would have been accessible in Europe for an average of 7.7 years before their anticipated U.S. release.
Requests for comment from AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Pfizer were not immediately fulfilled. For many years, drug companies have utilized the strategy known as patent thickets—multiple patent applications for little modifications on a single invention—to stave off generic competition.
A consumer organization claimed on Thursday that manufacturers of the most popular pharmaceuticals in the country are using the country’s patent system to limit competition and drive up costs, causing consumers to pay billions of dollars and deepening a drug pricing problem. According to research by the New York-based Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), three of the top ten selling pharmaceuticals in the U.S. have no domestic competitors. They will cost Americans an additional $167B before they are projected to do so.
The U.S. Medication Industry Remains Under Question
According to I-MAK, a non-profit organization of attorneys and scientists that has received funding from organizations critical of the pharmaceutical business, U.S. prescription medication spending, which currently exceeds $400B, should reach about a trillion dollars by 2030.
To stave off generic competition, pharmaceutical corporations have long used the tactic known as patent thickets—multiple patent applications for minor changes to a single innovation.
The group declared that not all dishonest people violate patents. An increasing amount of data suggests that preserving market domination by taking advantage of an out-of-date patent system is now a crucial component of the pharmaceutical industry’s business model for top-selling pharmaceuticals. The research concluded that pharmaceutical firms gain hundreds of patents to restrict competition because they can. It urged politicians and government organizations to update the patent system and eliminate patent tangles.
