Prometheus Rebound: Where Weak Patents Can Benefit Pharma

The Supreme Court’s review of the health care reform law threatens to undermine some of the foundations of pharma planning for the next several decades: a larger insured population with drug coverage, low out-of-pocket costs for drug patients, and substantial IP hurdles for biosimilar challengers. But at the same that the Court is making the Affordable Care Act provisions of the strategic picture more blurry, the court may be clarifying pharma’s continued dominance in the key new field of personalized medicine.

Immediately before the drama of three days of closely-watched oral arguments on the health care reform law, the Supreme Court issued two diagnostic patent rulings in quick succession on March 20 and March 26 in the Prometheus Laboratories and Myriad Genetics cases