Potential Changes for Patents Expiration for Brand Name Drugs in Canada
Canadian and European pharmaceutical lobbyists have been trying to bring changes to patent law as it relates to brand-name drugs for quite some time. The hope for these companies is that they will be able to add a few years to the lives of their drug patents.
This move could potentially add hundreds of millions of dollars to Canadians’ annual medical costs. It also provides further incentive for pharmaceutical companies and investors to invest further capital into projects that study diseases in the hopes of finding a cure.
The EU has reportedly proposed that the measures be included in a landmark free-trade agreement now being negotiated between the jurisdictions, with the fifth round starting last week in Ottawa.
If the changes go ahead they would delay the entry of cheaper generic copies of medication onto the market. Pharmaceutical companies that design and produce brand-name drugs say that the measures are needed to restore fairness to the patent system and to generate investment to support more drug research in Canada.
Generic drug companies take advantage of the research and development done by larger brand-name companies. Since the larger companies often spend billions to develop drugs that more often than not wind up failing and never making it to market, the expiration of patents and the ability for third parties to enter the market and sell those drugs under generic brands undermines a lot of the incentive to risk huge amounts of capital curing diseases.
A lot of the anger comes from the fact the pharmaceutical companies tend to make their products expensive. However, making it easy for companies to come in and sell the drugs that were very expensive to develop does not help the big companies lower prices. Instead they have no choice but to do their best to make their money before the patent expires. Otherwise, there would be no profits, and nobody would invest, and there would be no new funding for research.
Lipitor, a very successful cholesterol drug, for instance, had close to $1 billion in sales before it came off patent recently. Pfizer’s loss is Canada’s gain, however, as it could mean a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars for provincial drug programs, workplace health plans and uninsured Canadians on that medicine alone, since the drugs will be able to be purchased from a company that had no need to spend money on research.
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