Drug Patent Data

Drug patent data can be accessed online. All patent applications for all industries are reviewed by trained Examiners at the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The effective pharmaceutical patent life as revealed in drug patent data which starts from the time from market entry to patent expiration is 11.7 years.

In the drug patent data one can find that the only time pharmaceutical patent litigation takes place under the Hatch-Waxman Act is when a generic drug manufacturer is attempting to bring its product to market before all of the patents on the branded version of the drug expire. If the patent holder believes that the generic is violating its un-expired patent its only remedy is to sue to enforce the patent – the procedure expressly created by Congress in the Hatch-Waxman Act. Patent litigation can only take place inside the life of an un-expired pharmaceutical patent. If the pharmaceutical patent expires during the course of litigation, the lawsuit ends. A lawsuit is only filed to enforce an un-expired pharmaceutical patent.

A drug patent data generated showed that FDA reports that of 8259 generic applications filed between 1984 and January 2001, only 6% raised a patent issue, the necessary, but by no means obligatory, condition for pharmaceutical patent litigation. 94 percent, or 7781, of generic drug applications raise no pharmaceutical patent issues, and thus the drug patent data showed that at least 94 percent of generic drug applicants are not involved in Hatch-Waxman pharmaceutical patent litigation.

According to drug patent data from IMS HEALTH, prior to the passage of the Hatch-Waxman Act, generics accounted for about 19% of all prescriptions. Today, generics account for nearly half of all prescription drugs dispensed. Wall Street analysts and economists revealed in a drug patent data that the expected generic share of the market will reach nearly 60 percent by 2005. Previous to passage of the Hatch-Waxman Act, drug patent data revealed that only about one third of top-selling innovator drugs with expired pharmaceutical patent had generic copies, today nearly all top selling drugs with expired pharmaceutical patent have generic competitors. Drug patent data showed that the increased number of generic copies on top-sellers, and managed care's aggressive promotion of generics leads to a substantial erosion of the branded drug's market the day pharmaceutical patent expire or are broken by generic manufacturers.

Recent drug patent data compiled by Columbia University economist Frank R. Lichtenberg found that newer drugs save more money than older drugs.  In a 2001 drug patent data, he demonstrated that replacing older drugs with newer drugs yields an $18 increase in spending on prescription drugs but reduces non-drug spending by $71.09, resulting in a net savings of $53.09.