By Patrick Wingrove
(Reuters) – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and another Democratic lawmaker on Thursday said they had sent a letter urging the Department of Commerce to finalize its policy on when the government can seize patents on drugs and other products whose research it funded.
The Biden administration in December announced it was setting a new policy that would allow it to seize patents for technologies developed with government funding if it believed their prices were too high.
The government, which gave the public until February to comment on the proposal, is expected to make a decision on whether to finalize the change to so-called march-in rights within days, according to a source close to the matter.
March-in rights, which have never been used before, allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.
Warren and U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett said an analysis of the public comments submitted for the proposal showed 85% were in favor.
“As you work to finalize the guidance, we urge you to consider the overwhelming support for the framework, including the thousands of comments calling for the use of march-in authority to lower prescription drug prices,” they wrote.
Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders sent a letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this month criticizing its efforts to derail the policy.
The chamber in March said it had launched a seven-figure initiative to oppose the proposal and other policies it deemed to be a threat to U.S. innovation.
The leading pharmaceutical industry lobby group PhRMA also took issue with the policy in its publicly-submitted comment, saying making price a factor added significant risk and uncertainty to the already risky endeavor of developing drugs.
The proposed policy applies to all technologies at any stage of development, according to the draft. Those who have called to use march-in rights in the past, however, have typically done so for drugs that received early-stage government funding.
Under the new policy, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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