The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.

Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.

The policy creates a roadmap for the government’s so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.

Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

  • Dem BosainEnglish
    17•11 months ago

    This is about as close as you can get to journalistic malpractice. All the stories I see mention a 60 day period for submitting comments, but none of them say how to do it.

    Here you can read the notification. Go Here to leave a comment (there’s a comment button under the title). You can leave an anonymous comment if you want, but I only read those for the when I want to feel indignant about the US educational system.

    Spread the links. Give them to your friends. Find the administrators of local charities and ask them to comment. Tell your congress-critters that you’re tired of corporations taking tax money to develop technology, then making billions off that technology.

    Publicly Funded means Publicly Owned!

    Note that it’s the NIST (National Institute of Standards Technology) and not the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) asking for comments. This is the most recent government notice regarding Baye-Dohl (edit, it’s Bayh-Dole). The next-most-recent is Nuclear Regulatory Commision (Dec. 4) and Department of Energy (October). If I see something from FDA I’ll post it.