What Exactly Is A Patent?

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 490
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In a way, this is way too technical for an article here but, unless you understand a little about the law, it's hard to understand why your drugs cost so much. Bear with us. It gets easier as we go on. A patent is a monopoly. Whoever invests the time and money to invent something new gets the exclusive right to sell the product for a limited period of time. Because there's no competition, the inventor can charge a higher than usual price to recover the development costs. At the end of the period of protection, anyone can copy the design and manufacture the product. Not surprisingly, this brings down the price fast and we consumers benefit. But there's no protection on the idea itself. So if another manufacture starts with the idea of the original product and also invests time and money to create a new way of exploiting the idea, that is also protectable by a monopoly. That's why the little blue pills were unchallenged on the market until 2003 when two other drugs arrived on the market. Both these new drugs were separately created and neither copies the original. This did produce a little competition in the market but not enough ...
... to really help the consumers. Both the new manufacturers had spent a lot of money and wanted to get it back as quickly as possible. It suited all three to keep the prices high for the erectile drug market.

Pfizer's original patent will run out in March, 2012 and the arrival of generic copies will potentially reduce its $1 billion in sales to the US market. So Pfizer is suing one of the world's biggest generic manufacturers to stop it from entering the US market until 2019. The basis of this action is the fact Pfizer registered a second patent on the underlying chemistry of the drug in 2004. The name of the generic is sildenafil citrate and there's no doubt at all that the first patent is valid. The second patent is disputed as a crude device for trying to buy an extra seven years of monopoly during which we can be gouged by higher prices. Essentially, it reinvents the original chemistry with one of two minor variations. The generic manufacturer is unimpressed but so far, the United States Patent Office has agreed with Pfizer that there's sufficient novelty in the second application to justify a new patent. We all wait with interest to see what the court in Virginia will say.

Why should you care? Although you may be buying online and therefore buying the generic copies manufactured outside the US at lower prices, everyone who goes through the US system to get a prescription ends up paying top dollar for the drug. Come March 2012, there should be a flood of generics into the US market and, when you go into your neighborhood drugstore with a prescription, you should see retail prices drop significantly. Viagra has proved itself a highly effect drug. That's why it's the biggest seller in the US. Because of the lack of price competition, we've all been paying more than we should. So we should all be cheering on the generic manufacturers. That's the way we get the Viagra we need without having to pay extortionate prices.