U.S. Patent Office software bugs extend drug patent life

TOAmid concerns that the pharmaceutical industry is abusing the U.S. patent system, a new paper suggests a way to end the problem: amending a little-known method for correcting errors that lengthen the life of a patent and can therefore greatly increase the cost of drugs.

The idea is to improve the way administrative delays are handled at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Sometimes delays are due to a patent review, so the PTO will compensate the pharmaceutical company by extending the patent term by the number of days caused by the delay. Conversely, if a company was late in responding to requests, the time is subtracted from the patent term.

The process for managing delays is called patent term adjustment. The process was created as part of a federal law called the Protecting American Inventors Act of 1999 and was seen as a way to compensate patent applicants when the PTO failed to act on applications within specified deadlines. And to do it right, the PTO relies on automated software.