WASHINGTON-Congress has made medical-procedure patents worth just less than the paper they’re printed on.
In a Solomon-like decision, the lawmakers tucked a clause into a spending bill, a provision that allows physicians to patent procedures but not to collect royalties on them.
That was essentially the fate of a patent on a sutureless incision that an ophthalmologist tried to enforce without success. He finally agreed in a federal-court consent order earlier this year to abandon his effort.
The law, which stops doctors from suing other doctors over patented procedures, was a rewrite of a bill by Rep. Greg Ganske (R-Iowa), a physician.
Dr. Ganske had been asked by medical groups to help ban patents on medical-practice procedures, which the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has denounced as unethical.
But Dr. Ganske’s first iteration-language that would have imposed a permanent ban on medical-procedure patents-raised the ire of the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. They feared it was so broad it could affect their products, including most gene-therapy patents, as well as those procedures it was intended to repress.
“It would have been the patent-lawyer full-employment act,” said Dave Schmickel, who is patent and legal counsel for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Instead, the compromise language simply gives the holder of a medical-procedure patent no legal recourse to sue other medical professionals who use the procedure in patient care. That was good enough for the AMA to declare victory. “It assures that new procedures will not be inhibited by patent-royalty arrangements,” said an AMA spokesman. -Julie Rovner
WASHINGTON-Congress has made medical-procedure patents worth just less than the paper they’re printed on.
