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 Orlando Advocate.
Kilbride highlights the important role strong patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical innovation. He explains that developing medicines requires substantial investment and that innovation often continues after initial FDA approval through advances in formulations, delivery methods, manufacturing processes, dosing, and new therapeutic uses.
The Op-Ed also challenges claims surrounding pharmaceutical “patent thickets” and “evergreening.” Kilbride points to a 2024 U.S. Patent and Trademark Office study that found no correlation between the number of patents on a medicine and the timing of generic competition, and argues that follow-on patents protect distinct innovations rather than extending the terms of earlier patents.
Kilbride warns that weakening patent protections could discourage the high-risk research and private investment necessary to develop new and improved medicines for patients.