How pharmaceutical companies game the patent system
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When a company reaches the top of the ladder, they usually kick it away so others can't climb it. The target? So that another company cannot compete. When this happens in the pharmaceutical world, certain companies remain at the top of the ladder, through broadly protected patents, at the expense of ordinary people who benefit from increased competition. Now that companies have figured out how to game the system legally, Amin argues that we need to get rid of this 'one size fits all/' system, which treats product innovation – 'tweaks/' – the same as product invention.
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TAHIR AMIN:

Tahir Amin is a lawyer with more than 25 years of experience in intellectual property law. Amin's groundbreaking patent-challenging work has created a new model for access to treatment, one that restores balance to the system by disrupting the structural power dynamics that perpetuate inequality.
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TRANSLATION:

TAHIR AMIN: There's a great quote from a German economist from the 18th century, and it was translated into a book by a Cambridge professor called Kicking Away the Ladder. And the idea is that when you reach the top of the ladder, you kick it away so that no one can climb it. And so the laws and trade rules become framed in intellectual property: you don't want anyone to compete. So intellectual poverty is really about the political economy of comparative advantage and who has the power and who can then really dictate how economies work in this modern economy.

Pharmaceutical companies – what they typically do in the small molecule space, which is the organic chemistry space – so there are a lot of products based on small compounds – what they typically do is get the first patent, and that is the broadest patent. coverage to protect the area in which they want to conduct the research. And typically the first patent could cover millions of compounds that they've screened. And then they look at which of those compounds have the best properties for a particular disease area that they are going to look at, and then they formulate that.

And typically in the first patent, they will broadly cover all of these aspects so that they have defined the area so that no one ends up in that research space. And then they usually add another patent, where we'll talk about how they deliver the product, the compound, into the body. And then they will find different ways to adjust the dosage form. They'll say, /"Well, we used to have three pills and we'll make one of them,/" or /"We'll change the coating of the drug to get a fast/extended release./"

Now people might say: something innovative in the sense of three pills in one, that never existed before for a particular product. /"That's inventive, that's innovative./" I would say it's more innovative in the sense that someone just applied it, but the basic science behind it has already been done and it's known that it can be done.

For example, science is not exact. Some things don't work with every specific chemical or every specific biological logic. But for the most part, you would know to try it. It's been done before, you know there's a root. So for me that is not an invention. That's probably more innovation in the sense of, "I took the existing science, I reapplied it, I came up with a different product." Now, in view of the patent system, I don't do that. I don't think you should get twenty years for that. I think your investment should be rewarded. That's fine. To me, that is a step-by-step repetition of existing science, of existing knowledge. But the counterargument to that is, “Well, if we don't give them something – if we don't give companies this incentive, they're not going to come up with these slightly varied formulations.” And my answer to that is: /"Fine, we want that, but you won't get twenty years for it./"

And I think this “one size fits all” model, “putting everything into the patent system as an incentive,” is now skewed because companies have figured out how to game the system. And I think this is where we need to take a step back and realize, do we need a different model for those low-hanging fruit, somewhat innovative adjustments? I don't call them inventions, because for me innovation is a byproduct of invention. Invention comes first. That is the truly new groundbreaking science. Innovation is nothing more than commercializing it.

When we use the term plan…

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