RE: New York Times Drug World29 Jan 2023 10:50
I wondered why AbbVie, the pharma part of Abbott Labs, was so high up the pharma majors list.
"In 2010, the Affordable Care Act created a pathway for the approval of so-called biosimilars, which are competitors to complex biologic drugs like Humira that are made inside living cells. Unlike generic equivalents of traditional synthetic medications, biosimilars usually are not identical to their branded counterparts and cannot be swapped out by a pharmacist.
The hope was that biosimilars would drastically drive down the cost of pricey brand-name biologics. That is what has happened in Europe. But it has not worked out that way in the United States.
Patents are good for 20 years after an application is filed. Because they protect patent holders’ right to profit off their inventions, they are supposed to incentivize the expensive risk-taking that sometimes yields breakthrough innovations. But drug companies have turned patents into weapons to thwart competition.
AbbVie and its affiliates have applied for 311 patents, of which 165 have been granted, related to Humira, according to the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge, which tracks drug patents. A vast majority were filed after Humira was on the market.
Some of Humira’s patents covered innovations that benefited patients, like a formulation of the drug that reduced the pain from injections. But many of them simply elaborated on previous patents.
For example, an early Humira patent, which expired in 2016, claimed that the drug could treat a condition known as ankylosing spondylitis, a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in the joints, among other diseases. In 2014, AbbVie applied for another patent for a method of treating ankylosing spondylitis with a specific dosing of 40 milligrams of Humira. The application was approved, adding 11 years of patent protection beyond 2016."
The US patent system is tailor-made for crookery.
Sign In
Follow the stocks
