WASHINGTON — The White House is throwing its support behind a controversial authority that allows the government to claw back patents for certain high-priced medicines, according to three sources familiar with the plans. It’s an early step that could have major ramifications for the American pharmaceutical industry, depending on whether and how federal officials actually use the authority.
The administration will on Thursday issue a framework for the National Institutes of Health to more broadly use so-called “march-in rights” — a policy that allows it to seize patents from drugmakers whose products rely on federally funded research, according to the three people familiar with the plans. The framework will lay out when the agency might assert this authority, and endorse using a drug’s price in that determination, the sources said.
March-in rights are a major power that the government has, until now, been extremely reluctant to use — the Obama administration, for example, rejected the idea, in part because pharmaceutical companies say the threat of such action would disincentivize them from researching and making new medicines. The NIH under Biden, too, has declined to use the power.