Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
July 17, 2000, Monday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 364 words
HEADLINE:
THE OLD COLLEGE TRY
BODY:
In the modern economy,
gold mines come in different shapes and sizes. One mother lode is any popular
prescription drug with a lengthy patent to
protect it against low-cost generic competitors. If a drug
maker can, as the law allows, get an extension on that
patent because the Food and Drug
Administration was slow in letting it come to the market, so much the better for
the company, if not its customers. But should the holder of a
patent for a drug-production process - not a
drug itself - be able to get the same kind of
extension?
This is the question raised by the dogged
efforts of Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to slip through Congress a
measure that would let Columbia University ask the US Patent
and Trademark Office to extend a biotechnology processing
patent issued in 1983. The patent, which
expires Aug. 15, has become a big moneymaker for Columbia, generating almost
$100 million in royalties last year.
Columbia has argued that, because
drug companies were not able to start using the process until
1988, it deserves an extension of its patent. Its champion on
Capitol Hill, Gregg, is a 1969 alumnus of the university and chairman of a
powerful Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Both the pharmaceutical industry
and consumer groups, however, have opposed the extension
measure, arguing that it would keep drug prices higher than
they need to be.
Gregg counters that Columbia plows all the royalties
into research and that drug companies motivated by "pure
greed," in his phrase, have no intention of letting consumers benefit from the
reduced royalties they will pay after Aug. 15. But on Thursday he basically
threw in the towel, saying there was no bill moving quickly enough through
Congress for him to enact his plan before the expiration.
Still, he and
his alma mater have raised an interesting question. While Gregg's attempt to do
this favor for Columbia by end-running the normal legislative process was
heavy-handed, Congress ought at least to look at the pros and cons of granting
process patents - especially ones granted to nonprofit
universities and research institutes - the kind of extensions
permitted for drug patents.
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July 18, 2000 
