New re­port sin­gles out Big Phar­ma play­ers for ring­ing their block­busters with patents while hik­ing prices for years

What do Roche, Pfiz­er and Ab­b­Vie all have in com­mon, aside from shar­ing Big Phar­ma sta­tus?

They all have pur­sued a strat­e­gy of padding their de­fense of block­buster fran­chis­es with a bristling set of patents while steadi­ly push­ing up the price of their biggest earn­ers.

That’s the con­clu­sion of a non­prof­it group called Ini­tia­tive for Med­i­cines, Ac­cess & Knowl­edge (I-MAK), which has is­sued a new re­port that spells out how this strat­e­gy works — at the ex­pense of con­sumers.

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