Thread by @realtahiramin

"America's patent system should reward innovation, not lawyering." Absolutely. But the elephant in the room that urgently needs tackling to solve this problem is "what is innovation" when it comes to deserving a patent under the patent system? bit.ly/2O41qvL

I keep hearing in discussions on how to tackle the #overpatenting/ patent abuse problem that "patents should only be granted for "real and meaningful innovation". What does that even mean?

I feel sometimes that we publicly dare not get into the weeds in case we sound "anti-innovation" or "progress" and #pharma won't invest in new medicines if we challenge the meaning too much. It's as if "innovation" is some religion and we walk on egg shells when criticising it.

If we are to get anywhere is changing how #pharma (and other industries) abuse the patent system that is leading to out of control drug prices that are killing people, we need to answer this question. Some thoughts for starters, but by no means definitive:

1. This may sound like semantics, but for the purpose of the patent system we need to go back to distinguishing invention from innovation. Strictly two very different concepts that would likely yield different outcomes in patenting rates because innovation is a much lower bar.

Example: one might "innovate" to bring a useful drug to market but has not "invented" any new science to achieve that result. Is the re-application of the known science "inventive" or is it "innovation"?Does it deserve the same 20 years as compared to completely new science?

2 Does investment of large sums of money to bring a "new" product to market mean it's inventive? #Pharma uses this argument all the time, even if the science behind the "new" product is recycled science/knowledge. Labour/time/$ does not always = invention and deserve a patent.

3 Is it an invention to take an existing compound/molecule, the properties of which were already known in terms of the potential indications it can treat, run some some trials and find a 2nd/3rd etc use and then launch various new products? Does each "new" product deserve 20 yrs?

And for those who argue/worry that not granting patents for every "innovation" would kill R&D/stop new drug development such that we shouldn't change anything, then you've just highlighted we have a serious problem that needs fixing.

Perhaps "innovations" should have some other reward outside of patents, just not 20 years over and over again for the re-application of tried/tested knowledge. Otherwise the patent abuses, #overpatenting and "innovative" lawyering will continue and prices will keep increasing.