My beef with patents

In a lot of biomedical companies, you are judged by the number of patents you hold. So we seek out every type of patent we can. I've been asked to file three patents today that I know will never be worked on by my company because we already have a ton of products in our pipeline. We're taking up the patent in order to prevent our competition from working on it. Or they can work on it, and we'll license the patent to them. But all we're doing is making a couple crappy sketches and filing. No actual R&D work. However, if you file lots of patents you get pats on the back, promotions, and $2000 per patent.

Let's say this product could have saved 100,000 lives. Now it won't, because no one can work on it, and we're not planning on developing it. This is contrary to journal publishing. We can steal, build-upon, and refocus from one another, but ultimately, nothing useful happens with the data...just like with some of these patents (by the way, my legal department says this isn't patent trolling, even though I think it is). So which is worse?

I'd say patents for a few reasons. First, in publications, nothing's happening with it (the time spent on my medical device patents will save more lives in a year than all my publications combined for the rest of the timespan of humankind), but at least you're letting anyone use it, including a company if they want to. A patent is locking up the idea. Second, patents don't contribute anything. They only take away. Patents are often written as broad as possible and very little engineering and science go into them. So no one can learn too much from them. This is on contrast to most manuscripts, where they are filled with all sorts of intellectual awesomeness that other researchers can build on. In addition, most of the claims are substantiated by data.  So someone else could potentially take the broad idea to market and save lives, but they can't without paying crazy license fees for a patent the issued company isn't using.  Patents have data, but it's not as scrutinized as most academic papers.  The change that the USPTO has made where you don't have to prove due-diligence and the patent is awarded to first-to-file is only going to make things worse (I can explain more on the patent cycle and medical device IP if any of you want to read a post on it).

Ultimately, I despise locking up an idea that could save lives if we don't intend on utilizing it. It's a defensive move that only helps shareholders. We could use these defensive patents as offensive weapons against the competition and the diseases. But ultimately, they sit back with their pitch and arrows just preventing anyone else from reaching good. 

Life's pretty cool

One of my products was passed to clinical affairs in my company.  This was my first project.  I came up with an idea my very first week on the job, and then I did a ton of science related to obtaining never-before-seen data.  New types of experiments, lots of debugging and talking with physicians.  This data culminated in a new product development.  I had some really great animal studies last year, then great human studies a few months ago.  Now, the design is frozen, and we're getting everything ready to take this to market.  Making money for myself and my company is cool, but the greatest thing happened earlier today.

I was at a local hospital and was talking to someone in a waiting room.  A man roughly 40 years old with his wife and two beautiful twin baby girls, maybe 5 years old.  He mentioned how he could barely move beforehand.  He had multiple corrective surgeries with no luck.  He was involved in the first human trial of a new product.  My product!  He mentioned how the new product has changed his life.  In three weeks he was up and moving, and in four more weeks his life was how it used to be before illness struck him 5 years ago.  He had maybe one year left in his life beforehand, and the physicians think he's going to live a full life now.  I didn't let him know that I came up with the medical device.

After he came out of the appointment, the doctor came out to talk to get me and bring me to his office to talk about the next stage of this device.  The doctor stopped the family and told them that I'm responsible for the product, from inception to implementation.  The wife teared up, and the father gave me a hug.  The girls just sat there.  I suspect the girls weren't told of the dad's severity.  They kept saying, "Thank you. Can we have you over for dinner? Can we take you out? etc.".  I told them I do it to save lives, not get free dinners.  Their thanks is enough.  

When I go through the job grind, I sometimes forget why I do this; why I got into this field.  In academia I plan to do the same.  Although, I would have the freedom to explore diseases outside of the mission statement of my company.  I'm happy where I'm at, I just know I could be happier, and do more good, in the academic field.  I just have to remember how good I have it, how many people have it worse, and keep focusing on what's important in life.  Life's pretty cool.