Ahead of Hearing on “Medicines and IP: Balancing Innovation and Access,” TAPP Urges Intellectual Property Rights Protection
The House Judiciary IP Subcommittee recently announced a hearing to be held on June 4 on the ways that patents and other intellectual property rights relate to drug prices. The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity sent a letter to subcommittee members, urging IP rights protection.
TAPP wrote the following:
As America approaches its 250th anniversary, our nation has an opportunity to reflect on the principles that transformed the United States into the most innovative and economically dynamic country in the world. Among the most important of those principles is the protection of intellectual property rights—protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The Founders understood that innovation flourishes only when creators and inventors can benefit from their work.
That principle is especially important today as Congress debates policies affecting pharmaceutical patents and biomedical innovation.
Unfortunately, recent discussions surrounding so-called “patent gaming” in the biopharmaceutical industry have been driven more by myths and political rhetoric than by evidence. Activists have claimed that pharmaceutical companies abuse the patent system through “patent thickets” and “evergreening” strategies designed to delay generic competition indefinitely. These accusations may sound compelling, but the facts tell a very different story.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s own 2024 study found no meaningful relationship between the number of patents associated with a medicine and the length of actual market exclusivity. On average, brand-name medicines face generic competition after roughly 12 to 14 years on the market, well short of a full 20-year patent term. In fact, approximately 28 percent of generic drugs launch while patents on the original product still remain in force, demonstrating that multiple patents do not inherently block competition.
Moreover, the United States already has one of the most competitive generic drug markets in the world. Roughly 93 percent of all prescriptions filled in America are generics, a number that has steadily increased for decades. That outcome would not be possible if the patent system were truly being manipulated to suppress competition permanently.
Critics ignore the reality that pharmaceutical companies are far less patent-intensive than many other sectors of the economy. Industries such as software, semiconductors, and financial services routinely generate far more patents relative to their research spending than biopharmaceutical firms. Of the top 300 patent-owning U.S. companies in 2024, only a small percentage were biopharmaceutical companies.
Importantly, the patent system already contains safeguards against abuse. Every patent must satisfy strict standards for novelty, usefulness, and non-obviousness. The USPTO also requires closely related patents to be linked through “terminal disclaimers,” ensuring that related patents expire at the same time as the original patent rather than extending exclusivity indefinitely.
Despite these protections, Congress is considering misguided proposals such as the ETHIC Act that would dramatically weaken the enforceability of pharmaceutical patents by limiting companies to asserting only one patent from certain patent groups in litigation. Such policies would create dangerous uncertainty in one of the riskiest and most research-intensive industries in the world.
Developing a single new medicine often requires billions of dollars in investment and years of scientific work, with no guarantee of success. Strong and reliable patent protections are what make those investments possible. Weakening those protections would not simply affect pharmaceutical companies; it would affect patients waiting for the next breakthrough cancer treatment, Alzheimer’s therapy, or lifesaving rare disease medicine.
At a time when China is aggressively investing in biotechnology and advanced technologies, weakening American intellectual property protections would send exactly the wrong signal. America’s leadership in innovation has never been inevitable. It depends on policies that reward discovery, encourage investment, and protect the fruits of American ingenuity.
As we celebrate America 250, Congress should reject efforts to weaken the patent system and instead reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment to intellectual property rights, scientific innovation, and economic leadership. Protecting intellectual property is not merely an economic issue: It is a patriotic commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit that has defined the American story for 250 years.
If the United States hopes to remain the global leader in medical innovation and economic opportunity for the next 250 years, strong intellectual property protections must remain a cornerstone of our national policy.
