Proposals to Improve Candor at the Patent Office

Alex Moss | December 19, 2022

Patents affect drug prices directly and powerfully. That’s why it’s so important to ensure that patents are only granted on new and useful inventions rather than obvious, irrelevant, or insipid variations. Because the Patent Office can only evaluate applications accurately if they receive accurate information, applicants have a duty to be candid in all submissions they provide.

Unfortunately, applicants too often violate their duty—particularly, in the pharmaceutical industry, where financial incentives to extend drug monopolies abound—but rarely pay the price. Instead, they reap monopoly profits for years longer than a patent term is supposed to last, and the American people pay that price.

This issue has attracted the attention of Senators Patrick Leahy and Thom Tillis, and due to their efforts, that of Patent Office Director Kathi Vidal as well. heir efforts have yet to yield concrete proposals about how to encourage candor and/or deter deception among patent applicants.

Thanks to the help of students and faculty at Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic, the Public Interest Patent Law Institute (PIPLI) has sent a letter to Senator Leahy, Senator Tillis, and Director Vidal, emphasizing the importance of this problem, explaining how it manifests, and proposing practical solutions for addressing it across the patent system.

Patent applicants’ lack of candor is a complex problem that will not disappear overnight, but we need not—and cannot—wait to start working on it. Better mechanisms for encouraging candor and deterring deception are essential for the patent system to promote the advancement of science and access to scientific advances. Public health depends on our success.