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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the fighting-against-the-tide-is-tiring dept.

TechDirt reports

[...] The past few USPTO directors had been cut from the "more patents is always a good thing" mold, whereas Lee actually recognized that bad patents harmed innovation. And even though the last time the Patent Office got concerned about bad patents it allowed the patent approval backlog to fill up, under Lee the backlog has reached its lowest point in a decade.[paywall]

[...] For all the craziness going on in the government right now, having competent leadership at the USPTO would be one less thing to worry about. But... now it's being reported that Lee has suddenly resigned and sent a goodbye email to staff. That's bad news on the patent front.

Of course, it may be ages before any new director is appointed. As I type this, of the 559 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, Trump hasn't even named a nominee for 431 of them. [...] Adding the new USPTO director to that pile may mean no new USPTO director for.... who the hell knows how long.


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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:44PM (4 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:44PM (#522090) Journal

    What? Pharma companies invest in research. I'm not talking about the small amount of drugs research that's funded by the government.

    Most of the actual research is financed by government through agencies like the NIH and DARPA, among others. After government research identifies potentially useful drugs, THEN the pharma companies step in and finance the costs to get it approved. That's not research, it's development. The research part is mostly done with public funds.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50972/ [nih.gov]

    So yeah it sounds exactly like that comp sci program...the university students get everything started for the private corporations free of charge, then once the corporations determine that the publicly funded research has identified something profitable, they step in to take those profits.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:26PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:26PM (#522226)

    Academic drug discoveries from 1998-2007:

    14 out of 117 “standard” small molecules that don’t have drug-company fingerprints on their original discovery

    and

    [17 out of] 98 NMEs that were approved via priority review

    A lot of research is funded through government grants, but pharmaceutical companies seem to be responsible for the majority of drugs. Also, many companies do not trust the reliability of academic research enough due to the reproducibility problems associated with it.

    http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/02/02/drugs-purely-from-academia [sciencemag.org]
    http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v9/n11/abs/nrd3251.html [nature.com]
    http://www.nature.com/news/biotech-giant-publishes-failures-to-confirm-high-profile-science-1.19269 [nature.com]

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:09AM (2 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:09AM (#522365)

      I wonder though how those numbers would look if you removed all the minor modifications of existing drug in order to get fresh patent protection...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:54AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:54AM (#522428)

        Those numbers are for new molecular entities (not different formulations). In terms of close similarities with existing drugs, Dr. Lowe points out that a substantial portion of the academic discoveries fall under this category.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 10 2017, @01:08PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Saturday June 10 2017, @01:08PM (#523476)

          My understanding is a substantial portion of all new drugs fall into that category - and most offer no new benefits beyond fresh patentability.