U.S. Patent Office software mistakes extend patent life for drugs

Amid considerations that the pharmaceutical business abuses the U.S. patent system, a brand new paper suggests one strategy to crack down on the issue — amend a little-known methodology for correcting errors that lengthen the lifetime of a patent and, consequently, can significantly add to the price of medicines.

The thought is to enhance the way in which administrative delays are dealt with on the U.S. Patent & Trademark Workplace. Generally, a delay is attributable to a patent assessment, so the PTO will compensate the pharmaceutical firm by extending the lifetime of the patent by the variety of days attributable to the delay. Conversely, if an organization was sluggish to answer requests, the time is subtracted from the patent life.

The method for dealing with delays known as a patent time period adjustment. The method was created as a part of a federal legislation known as the American Inventors Safety Act of 1999 and was seen as a strategy to compensate patent candidates when the PTO didn’t act on functions inside specified closing dates. And to get it proper, the PTO depends on automated software program.