Patent Law

IT players don't want patents [?]

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Editor: Should the Patent Reform Act be approved in anything close to its present form, what effect will those provisions have on life sciences companies?

Doug Cawley: Patent reform has been promoted by information technology giants and opposed by pharmaceutical companies. Basically, the big IT players don't want patents, and would be glad to see patent protection abolished altogether. They want to compete by brand and by being first in the market, and they see patents more as potential business disruptions than as assets. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies - and by extension other life science companies - live and die by patent protection. They spend vast amounts developing products that can easily be copied, and rely almost exclusively on patents to protect their investments. The pharmaceutical industry is skeptical of wholesale reform of the patent laws, and I think with good reason. Fortunately, there seems to be a sense that the system is working, albeit slowly. The courts have made substantial corrections to the patent marketplace in the past few years, and the view is growing that Congressional action is unnecessary.

IPBiz notes that the big IT players are obtaining patents. They simply don't like the patents of others.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 03, 2008 (boomark / email).