Giachino (00:05.0289 - 00:27.0829)
This is IP Protection Matters. I'm your host, Renee Giacchino. Today we are joined by Brad Watts, Vice President for Patents and Innovation Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center, a great organization that CFIF has worked with in the past. Brad, welcome to the show. Tell us what GIPC is up to these days.
Watts (00:28.0079 - 01:49.0660)
Hey there. Thank you for having me today and thank you for letting me come on and chat. I'm really honored and, and really glad to just be having this conversation. I've been in GIPC now for about two years. And as you noted, I primarily work on patent and innovation related issues, mostly focused in the domestic space, but with my colleagues as well working on international issues. And as you know, so much of what the Chamber of Commerce and GIPC does is focused on really promoting, protecting and defending America's innovation ecosystem.
I think for those of us who believe in markets and believe in free enterprise, we recognize that, you know, for companies to do what they do best, which is to bring that next big thing that next big idea to market, they have to have the robust legal frameworks and the robust property protections, particularly intellectual property protections necessary to recoup their investment.
So in a nutshell, the work we do, the things we're concerned about, the things that are important to us, revolve just around that: Defending free enterprise, promoting strong, robust and reliable IP rights so that businesses can do what they do best, and ultimately the world and the American public can benefit from that.
Giachino (01:49.0959 - 02:36.0960)
So often times, you know, there's data out there that is driving the debate, even driving the policy making. And for decades, there has been this international debate over the role of patents and other IP rights in both, in all of the discovery, the manufacturer, the distribution of drugs, vaccines, perhaps reaching its crescendo even following the COVID-19 pandemic. And since then, we've seen a lot of unreliable data from activist organizations infecting these ongoing debates here in the U.S. and even worldwide. Share with us your thoughts on how this bad data is driving the debate in support of what I would deem to be - and I'm sure you would agree - weaker IP protections.
Watts (02:37.0270 - 05:31.0820)
Well, thank you for that question. That is an absolutely great question. And I couldn't agree more with your conclusion that so much bad data is driving a narrative that is pushing for weakened IP protections. So I think that is, you know, just a fact.
Before I came to the Chamber of Commerce, you may or may not know, I worked on the Hill for about eight years, and four and a half of those years I was the Republican chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary IP subcommittee working for one of my great friends and mentors, Senator Tom Tillis. And Senator Tillis used to always say that good policy making has to be predicated on good evidence and good data. Right. You don't make policy hoping the evidence supports it. You look at the evidence and you look at the data and you make good policy based on that. And I can think of nowhere where that is more true in the policy-making area than when you're dealing with intellectual property.
Why? Because as we both know, intellectual property is very complex, it's very technical, very wonky, but more importantly for innovative industries, the strength or the weakness of their IP protections is life or death for them. It's the difference between investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a new treatment or cure that may or may not make it to market or shelving a project regardless of its potential benefits because there's no ability to recoup that investment.
You know, we're not talking only about dollars and cents about a product coming to market or not. We're also talking about people having the ability to access that next generation of technologies, treatments, cures and innovative products. And unfortunately, as you noted over the last 10, 15, maybe even 20 years, we've seen a sustained effort by individuals who don't believe in strong intellectual property protections to weaken IP standards. And we see this particularly in the context of life silences. I think you and I both know, right, that the amazing medical innovations we see today that allow people to live longer, healthier, more prosperous lives are only due to the massive investment of the private sector into these groundbreaking therapeutic areas.
But some of these activists who are pushing for weakened IP rights fail to recognize that they use faulty data - data that I've talked about in some of my writings - to push this narrative that somehow IP rights are an impediment to health benefits for Americans. And we know as believers in the free market that nothing could be further from the truth that these innovative companies are often spending hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, bringing these products, treatments and cures to market. And as a result because of our free enterprise system, American patients get those treatments and cures first. They get that shot at a better, healthier, happier life first. And that's largely due to our free-market system and the fact that we have strong IP protections.
Giachino (05:32.0170 - 06:16.0850)
So let's chat for a minute. I want to get down into the weeds, literally speaking, and talk out about patent thickets. Because that is an area, when we talk about patent thickets and the term evergreening and follow-on patents, there's a lot of terminology out there that I think, you know, the activists have worked very hard, particularly, you know, to provide these false claims that innovative life science companies amass these excessive patents on a single new medicine to make it more difficult for or even prevent generic medicines from entering the marketplace. But then we have the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's latest research that seems to prove them wrong on this. Can you elaborate on that for us?
Watts (06:16.0859 - 09:42.0669)
Absolutely. And phenomenal question. I mean, first and foremost, I like to always start out by saying terms like "patent tickets," you know, "evergreening," those aren't legal terms. Right. Those are terms of art that have been invented to describe what some people don't like and view as an unfavorable policy outcome.
But putting aside those terms, the fact that, you know, they're not legal terms. Right. They're made-up terms of art by activists. The reality is they ignore the simple fact that you get a patent on each and every invention that is novel, unique and isn't conflicted out by prior art that is described and enabled. Right. When people say, "Oh, this Pharma company has 80 patents on one drug," that is not true. That is not true and any expert who understands patent law can tell you that what those companies do, though, is they have 80 patents on 80 unique distinct inventions. Because as we know, the reality is when you take a pill, a pill isn't covered by one innovation.
Why? Because you may need an innovation to get the actual treatment. Right. You may need an innovation to improve the dosage. You may need an innovation to approve the efficiency. Right? But each of those things is a unique invention and unique idea. And the reality is at any point when one of those things goes off patent, it is available for the public to utilize. And you noted, you know, PTO has actually disproven in its recent report, this idea that all of a sudden, if a product has, let's just say 30 patents on it, that the public can't get access to that for decades. PTO's recent report actually found, and I talk about this in a blog post that I offered, that there are several products that had generic competition on the market well before the expiration of their base patent, let alone any additional patents, they got to improve that product. So there's just a misconception between reality and fact, or perception and fact, when it comes to some of these claims.
But more importantly, and as a matter of public policy, this is something I always emphasize to lawmakers, to staffers, to the public at large. Don't we want a situation where an innovative company develops a medicine and then they keep improving it. Right. Do we want a situation where say insulin is invented and it's never improved upon again? Because if that was the case, we'd still be living in a world where people were taking an insulin shot five or six times a day. Which if you know anyone who's diabetic, you know that those shots are painful, they're invasive, they can be hard on the body. But we don't have that now. Now we have insulin where people can take it once a day, sometimes once a week. Right? So we want to encourage these private sector innovators to not only develop the medicine but continue to develop it to make it more effective, to make it less invasive, to make it easier for you as a patient to comply. That is just as worthy of protecting, supporting and promoting as the development of the original medicine itself.
And I think if you went to any patient and asked them, hey, would you like that pill that you take once a day, that can be very disruptive on your digestive system, would you want a company to spend time and money to make it where you only had to take that pill once a week? My hunch is most patients would say yes and that's a desirable outcome. We should support.
Giachino (09:43.0200 - 09:51.0390)
Our guest is Brad Watts, Vice President for Patents and Innovation Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center,
Giachino (09:51.0619 - 10:11.0559)
Brad. What changes do you believe need to be made to ensure that the patent system continues to play its critical role. You've talked about how it incentivizes and it protects the investments essential for bringing these lifesaving and, and life-altering drugs to market. What is it, what changes need to be made to ensure that this continues to happen?
Watts (10:11.0900 - 12:41.0320)
Well, I think I always start from the basic premise, right, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Not broken, don't try to fix it. And there are many individuals, many of our member companies that we represent, many thought leaders, many academics who have ideas about changes that can be made to strengthen the patent system. And I'll leave that arena for them.
For me, though, what I would like to say is that, you know, when it comes to policy making, sometimes not doing something can be a good outcome. And as you know, there are many bad proposals out there that would weaken the patent system if they were implemented. And so for me, I think that's the most important thing is that at a minimum, we need to stop weakening the IP system - policies that propose to weaken patent protection, that propose to limit the amount of patents you can get because you're innovating in a certain area. I think those are just bad policies.
If we've seen anything it's that if we create the right legal frameworks for companies to flourish, to innovate, to take risk, they will do big things within that framework. And, for me, that is the most important thing we as policymakers, as thought leaders and advocates can do so we can stop bad policies, and then get out of the way so that the free enterprise system, the private sector, can go out and ultimately deliver not only great new products, but another issue that's never talked about in this debate, particularly when it comes to pharmaceutical products is it creates organic market based competition, right?
As you know, as any of us know, when we go to the pharmacy, most medicines have a generic version and those generic versions often cost pennies on the dollar. Right? If there's a medicine, I take the generic version of it for a 90-day supply is $6. Right? And there are multiple manufacturers of that generic medicine. The reason is because once the product goes off patent, anyone can make it, there is organic market competition.
So if anything, we should want more people out there inventing, patenting and innovating. Why? Because after 20 years, that product becomes available to anyone in the public to use, to manufacture, to produce. That is a beautiful thing about the market-oriented basis of our IP system. It not only gets knowledge out of the laboratories, it ultimately gets that knowledge into the public domain so that anyone can benefit from it.
Giachino (12:41.0849 - 12:51.0799)
Brad, thank you so much for helping us understand why we should care about IP protections or in other words, why IP protection matters? Any parting thoughts, Brad?
Watts (12:52.0219 - 14:23.0880)
Well, first thank you for inviting me. Thank you for allowing me to talk about the work we do at the Chamber. But most importantly to talk about something that I think that is important for anyone who believes in innovation and free market economics, which is that we want to get companies out there inventing products, innovating, developing that next big thing. And as I like to remind people all the time, when we talk about changing the patent system, we're not talking about talking about changing it if it's for the worse, just for one industry or sector. Right. The patent system impacts everybody. And I challenge anyone, particularly in this work from home era, who's listening, look around your home, look at all the products, technologies and services you have, you know that energy efficient dishwasher, you know where that washing machine that you were able to get at a fraction of the cost that you paid 10 years ago for an older model. These types of innovations and mass productions are available because companies invested time and money, they secured intellectual property protections, and they brought that product to the market.
So if we take policy actions aimed at hurting one industry, we really hurt the entire economy and we hurt every invader. And as we all know in our own homes, there are hundreds of products, if not more, that rely on innovation, rely on ingenuity. And that's the type of action we should want to be supporting - more actors in the private sector, taking risks and making the world a better place.
Giachino (14:24.0380 - 14:36.0900)
Brad Watts, Vice President for Patents and Innovation Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center. Thanks for joining us today on IP Protection Matters. I'm Renee Giacchino.