PhRMA The Catalyst blog: What They Are Saying: Stakeholders Raise Concerns about Patent Litigation Reform, by Robert Zirkelbach
This post originally appeared in The Catalyst blog on April 24, 2014.
Patents are critical to the innovation ecosystem, and the lifeblood of the biopharmaceutical industry. Protecting and enforcing them is essential to keeping the engine of scientific discovery running for patients.
Over the past few months, a wide range of stakeholders – including universities, employers, and the biopharmaceutical industry – have raised concerns that the Innovation Act, legislation designed to address abusive patient litigation, could have unintended consequences for patients. If intellectual property is not adequately protected, innovative research becomes more difficult which in turn impacts biopharmaceutical companies’ ability to develop new medicines for patients.
Here is what stakeholders are saying about The Innovation Act:
- “The Innovation Act, would change the U.S. patent system in ways that would diminish the benefits of university research, as well as the innovation produced by independent inventors and startup companies.” – Robert Brown, President, Boston University and James Clements, President of Clemson University in The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2015
- “The “Innovation Act” will allow large, market-dominant firms to infringe with impunity, by making it much more difficult for small inventors to enforce their patents.” – Robert Schmidt, Co-Chair of the Small Business Technology Roundtable in The Hill, April 16, 2015
- “Yet the Innovation Act…[is] sweeping legitimate patent holders, including universities, in with trolls, making it considerably riskier and costlier for all patent holders, not just patent trolls, to enforce their patents against violators. – Robert Brown, President, Boston University and James Clements, President of Clemson University in The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2015