In the United States, generics are dirt cheap, while the market for patent protected medicines is one of the most lucrative markets for any product.
On Wednesday, ViiV Healthcare a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Shionogi announced it would grant a voluntary license to the Medicines Patent Pool to enable low-cost supply of a key pediatric HIV medicine in the 118 countries in which 98.7% of all HIV-positive children reside.
Generic drugs, cheap knockoffs that hit the market after medicines lose patent protection, saw sales jump 20%.
These are cheaper and more sustainable options for governments in low-income countries for the basic, off-patent medicines that are needed.
Drugstores and pharmacy benefits managers have reaped gains from this trend since blockbuster medicines like the cholesterol fighter Lipitor lost patent protection at the end of 2011.
In the past few weeks, a rash of medicines have lost patent protection through court decisions.
Professor Venter said it is the only way drug companies are going to use genetic information to make medicines - to invest in the research they need the patent protection to ensure they recoup their money.
Right now there is a lot more dread about drugs that will lose patent protection than there is excitement about the company's experimental medicines, even though Pfizer is now testing 47 midstage compounds, more than at any other time in its history.
There are no more big drugs going off-patent through the end of the decade, he wrote, and new medicines more than support the company's valuation.
Pharmaceutical companies must worry less about squeezing additional profits from old medicines by copying the last successful drug and insisting on additional patent protections and focus more on new and innovative medicine.
Plavix and Singulair both go off patent over the next couple years, ending the age of mass-market medicines completely.
"This provision severely devalues all underlying patent rights and could seriously undermine the incentive to develop novel new forms of medicines and other technologies, " says BIO chief Jim Greenwood.
Making matters worse: By 2011, a quarter of current drug sales in the U.S. will be eaten away by less expensive generic pills as medicines lose patent protection.
While attending the Albany College of Pharmacy of Union University, he became fascinated by old apothecary items, like patent medicines and lozengemakers.
First, some medicines could have most of their sales in the U.S. because they are off-patent elsewhere.
Compared to the past few years, there will simply not be as many big-selling brand-name medicines losing patent protection, which means generic drugmakers cannot simply jumpstart growth by acquiring another generic drugmaker.
FORBES: Actavis Execs May Love NJ, But Ireland Has Lower Taxes
应用推荐