No-Innovation Patenting – CAPA – The Coalition Against Patent Abuse

Brand name drug companies often attempt to bury competition from generic and biosimilar drugs indefinitely by finding ways to re-package existing inventions in later patents. 

These later patents are often not innovative, meaning they are likely
invalid. Allergan’s Restasis patents illustrate this phenomenon as
well. Allergan was able to obtain new patents on its drug by making
unfounded allegations that the patents were innovative.

“The essence of the matter is this: Allergan purports to have sold the patents to the Tribe, but in reality, it has paid the Tribe to allow Allergan to purchase—or perhaps more precisely, to rent—the Tribe’s sovereign immunity in order to defeat the pending IPR proceedings in the (US Patent and Trademark Office) PTO…”

A federal judge eventually threw these patents out, finding that
Allergan had persuaded the PTO to issue the patents through “more
advocacy than science.” These patents would have cost patients an
additional $10.7 billion if a court hadn’t found the patents invalid.
Sometimes, as the original patent on a lucrative drug is close to
expiring, the brand name drug company will seek a new patent for
something as meaningless as changing from a pill to a gelcap and call
this a new innovation worthy of a new, multi-year monopoly from the
government.