Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. (Bonnie Cash/Pool Photo via AP)

Sen­a­tors call on USP­TO to ad­dress phar­ma patent thick­ets be­fore they start

Three Re­pub­li­can and three De­mo­c­rat sen­a­tors on Wednes­day called on the US Patent and Trade­mark Of­fice to at­tack phar­ma patent thick­ets be­fore they start.

The let­ter points to these patent thick­ets, or “large num­bers of patents that cov­er a sin­gle prod­uct or mi­nor vari­a­tions on a sin­gle prod­uct,” which can sti­fle com­pe­ti­tion. An ex­am­ple of such a thick­et can be seen with Ab­b­Vie’s Hu­mi­ra, which has been pro­tect­ed by a fortress of more than 100 patents, al­low­ing it to be mar­ket­ed with­out com­pe­ti­tion for more than 20 years as the first biosim­i­lar is com­ing from Am­gen in Jan. 2023.

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