Abstract

Drug patents are different. To improve their quality ex ante, regulators can use predictive models.

Drug patents provide crucial incentives for developing life-saving medicines, but when improperly granted, they can contribute to delays in competition and limit access. Although the maximum term of a patent is 20 years, drugmakers routinely seek and obtain longer periods of protection over drug innovations by filing for ‘secondary’ or follow-on patents that cover alternative formulations, doses, uses and combinations of drugs. In addition, drugmakers can file for ‘continuation’ patents to increase the density of patent protection. Lawmakers have increasingly expressed concerns about the contribution of weak secondary patents to ‘thickets’ of patents covering a certain drug, each of which poses an impediment to generic competition.

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• Keyword(s):
• machine learning 22
• pharmaceutical 11
• strategy and entrepreneurship 180

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