"My father, Norman Latker, was patent counsel for the National Institutes of Health in the 1960s and '70s, and among the principal architects of the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act ("Team Biden Looks for an Excuse to Impose Drug Price Controls" by Merrill Matthews, op-ed, April 27). He drafted the "march-in rights" outlining strict criteria that government had to satisfy to seize intellectual-property rights from inventors. It now appears the government intends to circumvent his safeguards, creating a path to impose price controls on drugs that merely don't align with its sense of acceptable pricing. My father would have been appalled.
Bayh-Dole's purpose was to afford inventors, rather than government agencies, patent rights for novel advances. "Market forces do a far better job of disseminating such inventions to society than government bureaucracies," my father wrote.
The bipartisan bill's passage unleashed a torrent of new investment into research and development, sparking a biotech revolution.
The march-in rights were a remedy of last resort for corporations unwilling or unable to bring advances to market. They were never intended as a method for price control and definitely not meant to obviate the profit incentive for drugmakers.
These companies have worked tirelessly to bring drugs to a complex global marketplace. They deserve public thanks and decent future profit margins without fear of corruption of their intellectual property rights. Businesses and universities should be watchful. It's a slippery slope once government decides it can do a better job with intellectual property than you can.
Miriam Latker Sell, M.D.
Phoenix" [1]
1. I'm From the Government, and I'm Here to Take
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 May 2023: A.16.
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