As the pharmaceutical industry faces pointed criticism over its patent practices, an effort appears to be under way to push back and challenge one of its leading critics in hopes of changing the narrative about patents and their role in prescription drug pricing.
The focus is on a nonprofit called the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, or I-MAK, which has published several papers over the last few years criticizing drug makers for pursuing patents that may profitably extend the marketability of their medicines, but without necessarily adding any new, substantive value.
This is hardly a new argument, but it has gained considerable traction as drug makers try to maintain profits from big-selling medicines as long as possible. A key tactic is to file patents that are touted as new inventions, but are really slight modifications, a practice known as evergreening. And filing dozens of such patents makes it harder for would-be generic rivals to gain access to the market.
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