In the latest bid to lower the cost of medicines, a new bill was introduced in Congress that would make it harder for pharmaceutical companies to use numerous patents in order to thwart generic competition.
The legislation, which was introduced in both the House and the Senate, addresses the use of so-called patent thickets. This refers to a widely used tactic in which a drug company obtains numerous patents — sometimes, numbering in the dozens — to protect its monopoly on a medicine even though some of the patents do not represent novel or innovative improvements.
For this reason, a simmering controversy has erupted in recent years over patent thickets. As brand-name companies collect more patents, generic rivals struggle to defend themselves against an increasingly large number of claims that would infringe multiple patents. As a result, infringement lawsuits take longer to resolve and settlements are often reached that delay launches of generic drugs.