Pharmaceutical patents are used to extend monopolies, leading to high drug prices, and reduced access. Will the psychedelic industry follow suit?
Vice..
The chemical makeup of naloxone has been known since 1961; it’s an old and cheap life-saving drug that can quickly reverse an opioid overdose. But Evzio, a naloxone auto-injector made by pharmaceutical company Kaléo, has regularly undergone dramatic price increases, at one point costing $4,500 for a two-pack. Because of its steep cost, insurance companies often require submission of prior authorization requests before they approve coverage for it—putting it out of reach for those who might need it.
It’s a common story in the U.S.: An old and cheap drug was transformed into an expensive, inaccessible product. This happened through patents, legally granted rights to exclude others from making or selling an invention. Kaléo has 25 patents on Evzio in total, the latest of which expires in July 2034.
What exactly did Kaléo invent? “A closer look reveals that not only are the patents overlapping, rather than distinct, but that nine of the inventions have the exact same name and are part of the same patent ‘family,’ covering modified versions of the same invention with slightly different dates of expiration,” wrote Colleen Chien, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, in a 2022 paper titled “The Inequalities of Innovation.”
Read more
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbyz5/psychedelic-patents-are-broken-because-the-patent-system-is-broken
