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Food and Drug Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Intellectual Property Law

University of Michigan Law School

Law & Economics Working Papers

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Full-Text Articles in Food and Drug Law

Cryptic Patent Reform Through The Inflation Reduction Act, Arti K. Rai, Rachel Sachs, Nicholson Price May 2023

Cryptic Patent Reform Through The Inflation Reduction Act, Arti K. Rai, Rachel Sachs, Nicholson Price

Law & Economics Working Papers

If a statute substantially changes the way patents work in an industry where patents are central, but says almost nothing about patents, is it patent reform? We argue the answer is yes — and it’s not a hypothetical question. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does not address patents, but its drug pricing provisions are likely to prompt major changes in how patents work in the pharmaceutical industry. For many years scholars have decried industry’s ever-evolving strategies that use combinations of patents to block competition for as long as possible, widely known as “evergreening,” but legislators have not been receptive to …


Promoting Healthcare Innovation On The Demand Side, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, W. Nicholson Price Apr 2016

Promoting Healthcare Innovation On The Demand Side, Rebecca S. Eisenberg, W. Nicholson Price

Law & Economics Working Papers

Innovation policy often focuses on the incentives of firms that sell new products. But optimal use of healthcare products also requires good information about the likely effects of products in different patients, and it is hard to provide the right incentives for producers to develop and disclose information that could limit future sales. Regulation partially fills this gap by requiring sellers to conduct clinical trials and report adverse events. But it is inherently problematic to rely on producers to supply negative information about their own products. Healthcare payers, however, can profit from avoiding inappropriate use of costly technologies. Recent technological …