Center for American Principles Policy Fellow Patrick Kilbride’s Op-Ed, Patients Benefit When Medicines Keep Improving: Patents Make That Progress Possible, was published in the Imperial Valley Press.
Kilbride highlights the critical role strong patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical innovation. He explains that medical innovation does not end when a medicine first receives FDA approval, as continued research can produce meaningful advances in formulations, delivery methods, manufacturing processes, dosing, and new therapeutic uses that improve treatments for patients.
The Op-Ed also challenges claims surrounding pharmaceutical “patent thickets” and “evergreening,” explaining that patents on follow-on innovations protect distinct inventions rather than simply extending the original patent. Kilbride argues that weakening these protections could discourage the high-risk private investment necessary to develop new and improved medicines for patients.