Why drugmakers aren’t sweating the next wave of patent losses; Bloomberg News via News Chief, July 10, 2017

Bloomberg News via News Chief; Why drugmakers aren’t sweating the next wave of patent losses

"Drugmakers plunged off a patent cliff earlier this decade, losing billions in sales as lucrative branded drugs lost exclusivity. An expensive lobbying effort aimed at preventing a repeat is paying off.

The loss of a series of key patents for cholesterol fighters and other widely used medicines cost big-name drug companies about $82 billion in sales between 2011 and 2013, according to life-sciences data company Evaluate Ltd., forcing large-scale job cuts and a wave of deals to make up for lost revenue...

By the time lawmakers passed a path to market for biosimilars as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the industry had assured that competition would come much more slowly, making the resulting sales decline look less like a precipice and more like a gentle hill."

The World’s Best-Selling Drug Just Lost a Key Patent Battle; Fortune, May 18, 2017

Sy Mukherjee, Fortune; 

The World’s Best-Selling Drug Just Lost a Key Patent Battle

"The rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis medicine has recently been a target of biopharma companies that are trying to make generic Humira copycats called "biosimilars."...

Once the drug does fall off the patent cliff, however, AbbVie could be in for some rough times. Humira sales make up more than 60% of its revenues."

What Is a Patent Cliff?; Fool.com via Fox Business, 7/6/16

Motley Fool Staff, Fool.com via Fox Business; What Is a Patent Cliff? :

"When a company is issued a patent, it can sell the item covered by the patent on the open market without having to worry about competitors coming in and snatching up a piece of the action. But the problem with patents is that they only have a limited life, and when they run out, they can significantly impact a company's bottom line. This is a particular problem in the pharmaceutical industry, where drug companies rely on patents to sell the products they work so hard to develop. That's why drug companies are often subjected to what's known as a patent cliff.

A patent cliff is what happens when a company's revenue starts plunging, or falling off a cliff, because an established product's patent reaches its expiration date and competitors can then start selling that product. While the term technically applies to any industry, it most frequently comes into play when talking about pharmaceutical companies."