Patent Expirations: Generic Drugs in a Designer Market
Many Americans are paying an arm and a leg for a brand name medication every month, just counting down the days until the drug company’s patent expires. When this patent expires, a many generic versions will be ready to be sold on the free market. Many of us don’t know exactly how the drug patent process works.
Drug patents in the U.S. protect a brand name drug for 20 years. This seems like an awful long time, huh? Well, thankfully, this time period starts when clinical trials first begin on a medication.This/tag helps explain it more. The process spanning from clinical trials until the drug is actually on the market can take many years. By the time most medications hit the market, there are between 7 and twelve years left of this patent protection. This means no other company can produce this medication for that time period. No competition means high prices.
Once the patent on a drug has expired, the medication is fair-game to be produced by other manufacturers. The drug companies who originally held the patent on profitable medications have been known to be very creative; they often come out with slight variations on the original product and market them as far superior.