Patent Rights & You

   Perhaps you have never invented or created anything in your life and believe that patent rights have nothing to do with you.  I have found that belief can be very wrong.  Our government created and enforces patent rights.  The foundation of those rights is the belief that if someone has the creativity and perseverance to create a new product or system to benefit the lives of others that they have the sole right to financially benefit from their creation.  That seems fair.  This right is bestowed on both people and corporations.  Patent rights are designed to benefit all and reward the creator of the idea, while improving our quality of life.

   How could you argue with that business concept?  Easy.  The laws that guide patent enforcement are easily corrupted and at a great cost to society.  I think that I am safe to say that whenever corruption can be used to create great wealth for the greedy, it will be.  Would a pharmaceutical company take an action that will ultimately take Medicare away from you, your children and take the long term income away from them?  Oh, yes they would.  Corporate decisions are more and more influenced by quarterly profit reports, rather than long term benefits to the corporation or the society it serves. 

   My favorite example of this abuse to society is being done to you and me by a group of pharmaceutical companies, but the abuse is available to all companies.  Watch for it in your cost of living.  My cost of living is primarily paid by Medicare to AbbVie Corporation (CEO, Richard Gonzales).  You see, I have CLL (Chronic Lymphocyte Leukemia).   The disease would have killed me in 2019 without the AbbVie supplied drug, Imbruvica (ibrutinib).

   A quick history of the pharmaceutical scam would be: Celera Pharmaceuticals developed and patented ibrutinib.  During the FDA approval process, Pharmacyclics, a pharmaceutical company probably better able to manufacture and distribute the product, purchased the patent rights for three million dollars.  This figure is probably in line with the value of a lifesaving drug and the research and development required bringing it to fruition.  The next market transaction was a purchase of the patent rights by Johnson & Johnson (the baby powder folks) for nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars.  I have a hard time seeing the purpose of this transaction, other than giant profits through bilking the public for a lifesaving drug.  I would suspect that the next transaction exceeded J&J’s greatest expectations when they sold the rights to the drug to AbbVie for a whapping twenty-one billion dollars.  As you know, a million is a thousand thousands and a billion is a thousand millions.  So we are talking about a large purchase.  To give a better feel for the size of the purchase, a Japanese Corporation is currently negotiating the purchase of US Steel Corp. for $17.4 billion dollars.  So the Patent Rights enforced by our government must be of great value.  The basic purpose of any government enforced business law is to be a shield for its citizens, not a sword for the greedy.  This law is obviously being perverted.

   AbbVie is having the drug Imbruvica produced in China so there are no manufacturing jobs being created.  Medicare pays AbbVie $195.125.74 per year for my Imbruvica.  My portion of that charge in co-pay is about $3,000 per month, but I don’t have that money available, so I turned the drug down.  “If living were a thing that money can buy, then the rich would live and the poor would die …”      Then comes a phone call from a foundation offering to pay my co-pay.  I asked who funded this foundation and was told “the pharmaceutical manufacturers”.  This funding comes back to AbbVie when the drug is purchased by Medicare along with my co-pay.  This is a monstrous scam on Medicare and will end the program.

  An effective government patent protection law would protect the inventor/creator of the product, as intended.  A single purchase with protections also might be allowed if the marketing of the right allowed the purchase at a maximum of 20% over book value of the protection.  No patent rights to a third purchaser.  This is what your government would look like if it represented you.

Cheers, Old Buz        3/31/2024

“Our Planet can provide for human needs … but not for human greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi