The Short-Sighted Attack on Patent Eligibility of Healthcare Related Patents

Over the last few years, there has been a sustained and worldwide attack on the scope of patent eligibility for inventions in general and healthcare and biologic inventions in particular. This assault on the availability of patents for inventions in some of the most complex and labor intensive areas of science bodes poorly for the future advances in these fields, and therefore for the availability of new breakthrough diagnostics and treatments for the patients. These attacks enjoy have popular appeal because the public prefers cheaper drugs and tests to the more expensive ones. However, this is very shortsighted. Limiting of patent rights today may lower the cost and increase availability of drugs and tests already on the market, but that approach will also simultaneously lower incentives for further innovation. If we are to hope that medicine will make as large strides in the next 30 years as it made in the past 30, courts, legislatures, and the public must be convinced that limiting the scope of patent eligibility is precisely the wrong way to go