Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
June 26, 2000, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A18
LENGTH: 264 words
HEADLINE:
Stopping the Patent Clock
BODY:
NOBODY LIKES to see an established income stream stop flowing into
one's bank account, and the holders of lucrative patents are no
exception. The latest example is Columbia University, which, realizing that its
enormously profitable patent on a biological
drug-making process called "cotransformation" was about to run
out, turned to friends in Congress for an extension. The
university pleads that the income from the patent goes to
much-needed research and development and that the extension it
seeks, likely to be about 15 months, would generate an extra $ 70 million to $
100 million for this laudable purpose. Columbia's allies have sought to slip the
extension measure first into a stalled agriculture
appropriation bill and then into a military construction bill now in conference.
But eroding the nature of patents in this way is
dangerous. Patents are meant to balance the broad public
interest in access to new inventions with the incentive of individuals to
invent. Patents run a set period of time, usually 17 years.
While they run, patent holders can make any deals that seem
best to them--as Columbia did by licensing its process to some 12 to 14
drugs and drawing royalties of one percent on each. Then
patent holders are supposed to relinquish rights, and let the
broad market in. Columbia isn't the first patent holder to hope
Congress will help it stave off that inevitability--the drug
company Schering-Plough has been trying for months to get similar service on its
lucrative Claritin patent. But it's a favor Congress should
resist giving.
LOAD-DATE: June 26, 2000
