Are “patent thickets” to blame for high drug prices?

By Kristen Osenga

(Opinion)

Americans overwhelmingly believe that prescription drugs cost too much. But they’re divided about the source of the problem — and the potential solutions.

Certain activists pin the blame on our legal system and accuse Big Pharma companies of using their armies of lawyers to construct “patent thickets” — supposedly a series of overlapping patents that prevent brand-name drugs from facing generic competition for decades, even after the original patents on the medicine have long since expired.

One such activist group, the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), recently released a report, Overpatented, Overpriced, arguing that these “patent thickets” are to blame for high costs at the pharmacy counter.

See more in this weeks Boone County Journal