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 Democrat News.
Kilbride highlights the important role strong patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical innovation. He explains that medical innovation frequently continues after a medicine receives its initial FDA approval, as additional research can produce improvements in formulations, delivery methods, manufacturing processes, dosing, and new therapeutic uses.
The Op-Ed also challenges claims surrounding pharmaceutical “patent thickets” and “evergreening.” Kilbride argues that follow-on patents protect distinct inventions and improvements rather than simply extending the original patent, and points to research finding no correlation between the number of patents on a medicine and the timing of generic competition.
Kilbride warns that weakening these protections could discourage the private investment and high-risk research necessary to develop new and improved medicines for patients.