Lawmakers in Washington want to confiscate the patents on coronavirus treatments and vaccines — before biotech companies even finish developing them.
A handful of senior House lawmakers, led by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), recently announced a plan “to ensure any COVID-19 drug will be accessible and affordable for all people.” Their proposal bars research firms from patenting their life-saving inventions and it mandates “reasonable” prices.
To achieve these goals, lawmakers would presumably rely — at least in part — on a relatively obscure federal law, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. According to Schakowsky and her allies, that statute allows the government to seize drug patents and grant other companies the right to make them if the price was “unreasonable” and one cent of public funding was used in the basic research.
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