title: Patent reform proposals raise the stakes for researchers, manufacturers of biologics.
abstract: When the founding fathers provided for patents in the American Constitution, they could hardly have envisioned the 21st-century demands the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office (PTO) face today. The PTO is an institution that is, by definition, concerned with the new-one essential element of a patent is novelty; however, it is also struggling to fit the needs of modern biotech research and development within a framework conceived by the young American government in the 18th century. In their new book Biotechnology and the Patent System (AEI Press, Washington, DC, 2007), Claude Barfield, PhD, and John Calfee, PhD, both Resident Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, discuss reforms being considered by legislators, lawyers, and members of the biotechnology industry that could modernize the patent system and make it work for all the stakeholders. The proposed reforms include changing the way patent applications are filed and pursued, limiting encumbrances that slow the application process, providing more funding to the PTO to speed consideration of applications, granting interested parties the right to intervene while a patent application is being considered, and limiting the administrative and economic burdens associated with the mushrooming numbers of patents for each product or process.
authors.forename: Shayna B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Kravetz
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frei