

Drug prices will fall sharply as patents expire - evolution
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2011/07/25/drug_prices_will_fall_sharply_as_patents_expire/

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bediger
Wait, wait... aren't patents supposed to _encourage_ R&D? The monopoly rent
from a patent is supposedly the only way to encourage firms to do R&D, to
innovate rather than copy.

And aren't patents getting stronger based on case law? The i4i vs Microsoft
thing re-affirmed quite a strict standard as to patent validity. I know it's
nothing compared to how copyrights are being made stronger and stronger, but
still, patents are being made stronger.

Shouldn't we be seeing _more_ innovation on that basis? There's a general
trend towards strong "intellectual property" protections, and Big Pharma has
been the industry pushing that kind of thing pretty hard.

So where's the real problem? Big Pharma R&D not working, FDA getting
irrational about approvals, Big Pharma coasting for the past N years? Biology
research has hit the limits of what it can do?

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JunkDNA
"Twenty drug approvals in the United States this year, and others in the next
few years, will help replace the revenue"

They make that statement at the end of the article in an almost offhand way,
but no analysis I have seen for _any_ of the big pharmas shows them anywhere
near to replacing lost revenue from the near-term patent expirations. We are
in a period of the fewest approvals for new drugs than almost any time since
the beginning of the FDA (and similar regulatory agencies around the world).
The industry is in bad shape, and there seems to be no relief for the lack of
R&D productivity any time soon.

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tobylane
I used to hear somewhat-reasonable cynicism over this, that the drug companies
could just make some minor change (add more sugar) and repatent it. Did this
ever work, and does it no longer apply?

~~~
JunkDNA
While the changes are often less trivial than "adding more sugar" the drug
companies have been using their ability to modify drugs slightly to extend
patent life. This essentially got them through the last 10 years in many
cases. But for most of the big money making drugs, they're out of options.
It's interesting to me (having worked for 8 years in pharma R&D) how little
the general public and news media have been reporting on the slowly unfolding
total meltdown of big pharma. They have been shedding jobs and down-sizing for
quite some time. The whole drug business is in complete shambles with lousy
R&D productivity and very little good news on the horizon. This is one of the
main reasons I left the industry.

