One Way To Force Down Drug Prices: Have The U.S. Exercise Its Patent Rights; NPR, March 16, 2017

Alison Kodjak, NPR; 

One Way To Force Down Drug Prices: Have The U.S. Exercise Its Patent Rights

"...Trump already has a weapon he could deploy to cut the prices of at least some expensive medications.

That weapon is called "march-in rights."...

...[L]ower prices could also make drug companies less eager to invest lots of money in new medications.

That's the trade-off the government has always had to wrestle with. But it's one Trump could very well decide is worthwhile.

"Perhaps we as a country would rather have lower drug prices and a little less innovation," [Sara Fisher] Ellison [an economist at MIT] said."

Lloyd Conover, Inventor of Groundbreaking Antibiotic, Dies at 93; New York Times, March 12, 2017

Denise Gellene, New York Times; 

Lloyd Conover, Inventor of Groundbreaking Antibiotic, Dies at 93

"With tetracycline’s commercial success, however, came a slew of patent challenges. Three pharmaceutical companies claimed that their scientists had discovered tetracycline before Dr. Conover, although their patent applications were filed later. After Pfizer licensed tetracycline to its competitors to end the dispute, the federal government challenged the licensing deals as anticompetitive, along with the validity of the patent.

“I had essentially a second career, preparing for and giving depositions and testifying,” Dr. Conover wrote in a 1984 article in the journal Research Management.

At scientific meetings, he wrote, he felt a coolness from peers who thought that his patent claim was false. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia finally affirmed the patent — and, by extension, the licensing agreements — in 1982, three decades after Dr. Conover invented tetracycline."

Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough; New York Times, 11/28/16

Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times; Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough:

'Gleevec, which made almost $5 billion for Novartis last year, has been at the center of a long battle between pharmaceutical companies and activists fighting price increases. The drug cost about $26,000 per year in 2001, and Novartis repeatedly raised the price even as competitors emerged; early this year, it was more than $120,000.

Those who support broader access to medicines argue that poor countries should reject patents and make generic versions of leukemia drugs. In 2013, India’s highest court struck down Novartis’s patent application for Gleevec, opening the way for generics. They now cost about $400 a year in India and about $9,000 in Canada."

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."