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Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia
Australia, like most countries, faces high and rapidly-rising drug costs. There are longstanding concerns about pharmaceutical companies inappropriately extending their monopoly position by “evergreening” blockbuster drugs, through misuse of the patent system. There is, however, very little empirica...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3618270/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23577165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060812 |
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author | Christie, Andrew F. Dent, Chris McIntyre, Peter Wilson, Lachlan Studdert, David M. |
author_facet | Christie, Andrew F. Dent, Chris McIntyre, Peter Wilson, Lachlan Studdert, David M. |
author_sort | Christie, Andrew F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Australia, like most countries, faces high and rapidly-rising drug costs. There are longstanding concerns about pharmaceutical companies inappropriately extending their monopoly position by “evergreening” blockbuster drugs, through misuse of the patent system. There is, however, very little empirical information about this behaviour. We fill the gap by analysing all of the patents associated with 15 of the costliest drugs in Australia over the last 20 years. Specifically, we search the patent register to identify all the granted patents that cover the active pharmaceutical ingredient of the high-cost drugs. Then, we classify the patents by type, and identify their owners. We find a mean of 49 patents associated with each drug. Three-quarters of these patents are owned by companies other than the drug's originator. Surprisingly, the majority of all patents are owned by companies that do not have a record of developing top-selling drugs. Our findings show that a multitude of players seek monopoly control over innovations to blockbuster drugs. Consequently, attempts to control drug costs by mitigating misuse of the patent system are likely to miss the mark if they focus only on the patenting activities of originators. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3618270 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36182702013-04-10 Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia Christie, Andrew F. Dent, Chris McIntyre, Peter Wilson, Lachlan Studdert, David M. PLoS One Research Article Australia, like most countries, faces high and rapidly-rising drug costs. There are longstanding concerns about pharmaceutical companies inappropriately extending their monopoly position by “evergreening” blockbuster drugs, through misuse of the patent system. There is, however, very little empirical information about this behaviour. We fill the gap by analysing all of the patents associated with 15 of the costliest drugs in Australia over the last 20 years. Specifically, we search the patent register to identify all the granted patents that cover the active pharmaceutical ingredient of the high-cost drugs. Then, we classify the patents by type, and identify their owners. We find a mean of 49 patents associated with each drug. Three-quarters of these patents are owned by companies other than the drug's originator. Surprisingly, the majority of all patents are owned by companies that do not have a record of developing top-selling drugs. Our findings show that a multitude of players seek monopoly control over innovations to blockbuster drugs. Consequently, attempts to control drug costs by mitigating misuse of the patent system are likely to miss the mark if they focus only on the patenting activities of originators. Public Library of Science 2013-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3618270/ /pubmed/23577165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060812 Text en © 2013 Christie et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Christie, Andrew F. Dent, Chris McIntyre, Peter Wilson, Lachlan Studdert, David M. Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title | Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title_full | Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title_fullStr | Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title_full_unstemmed | Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title_short | Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia |
title_sort | patents associated with high-cost drugs in australia |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3618270/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23577165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060812 |
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