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 Boston City Paper.
Kilbride highlights the critical role strong patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical innovation. He explains that medical innovation does not end with a medicine’s initial FDA approval, as continued research can lead to 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 follow-on patents protect distinct inventions and do not extend the terms of earlier patents. Kilbride warns that weakening these protections would discourage the high-risk private investment necessary to develop new and improved medicines, potentially jeopardizing future breakthroughs for patients battling cancer and other serious diseases.