Congress is considering several ill-conceived bills that purport to address abuses in the patent system, but would in reality weaken core intellectual property protections, undermine U.S. innovation leadership, and benefit foreign competitors at America’s expense. Last month, we examined the flaws behind two of them: the Drug Competition Enhancement Act and the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act. This month, we’re spotlighting two additional bills — the Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act of 2025 and the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act — that are similarly based on misconceptions and pose serious threats to America’s innovation economy.
Here’s a look at three of the core arguments underlying these bills and why they misrepresent reality:
| Claim: The Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act would “help taxpayers… by increasing competition and cutting red tape.” |
| In reality: Far from cutting red tape, the Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act would create new bureaucratic hurdles that slow innovation and undermine patent quality. The bill would establish an interagency task force to share patent information between the USPTO and the FDA, a move meant to ensure that patent laws are followed and not abused. However, this is entirely unnecessary, as many legal safeguards against providing inaccurate or inconsistent information to the FDA and USPTO already exist. Instead of reducing red tape, the bill would create duplicative bureaucratic steps in the patenting process, leading to confusion, uncertainty, and delays that waste the government’s time and resources. Moreover, intellectual property experts warn that interagency entanglement could weaken the patent system by inserting officials without patent law expertise into the examination process. Reducing the reliability of the patent system in this way would inevitably disincentivize new drug innovation and set a dangerous precedent for limiting patent rights in other sectors. |
| Claim: The Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act would “reduce drug prices by promoting competition.” |
| In reality: The Preserve Access to Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act would not meaningfully reduce drug prices — but it would undermine the basic ability of patent holders to defend their inventions. It would impose sweeping regulations to block alleged “pay-for-delay” settlements, despite the fact that these settlements are already subject to strict FTC scrutiny and handled effectively on a case-by-case basis. By replacing careful, targeted analysis of genuine anticompetitive behavior with broad generalizations and rigid presumptions, this bill would hinder the lawful and efficient resolution of patent disputes. As a result, if this bill is passed, many legitimate and law-abiding innovators could find themselves entangled in unnecessary legal controversy, forcing them to divert valuable resources away from research and development and slowing the progress of medical innovation. |
| Claim: Both bills would help spur competition and strengthen the effectiveness of America’s drug development system. |
| In reality: The sponsors of both bills claim that they would strengthen competition in the U.S. drug industry. But in reality, they would do the opposite — harming U.S. innovation while handing an advantage to China and other foreign competitors. Both bills would inject substantial uncertainty into the drug development process, including by weakening the reliability of patent protections. That would limit companies’ ability to bring products to market, reducing competition and slowing the pace of domestic medical innovation. If the bills succeed in weakening IP, drugmakers in other countries — including China, which supplies approximately 17% of the ingredients in U.S. drugs, and India, which provides nearly half of America’s generic prescriptions — will have an easier time surpassing the U.S. firms. Further, increased bureaucratic hurdles to drug development in the United States could increase the relative attractiveness of other countries for drug companies and investors. Ultimately, rather than strengthening America’s economy by promoting competition, these bills would privilege our global competitors and put U.S. innovators at a disadvantage in a key strategic industry. |