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 Free Bird Times.
Kilbride highlights the important role strong patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical innovation. He explains that innovation often continues long after a medicine receives its initial FDA approval, with additional research producing improvements in formulations, delivery methods, manufacturing processes, dosing, and new therapeutic uses.
The Op-Ed also challenges claims surrounding pharmaceutical “patent thickets” and “evergreening,” arguing that follow-on patents protect distinct inventions and improvements rather than simply extending the original patent. Kilbride warns that weakening these protections could discourage the private investment and high-risk research necessary to develop new and improved medicines.