Joe Nocera on the existence of PTAB

From Joe Nocera's Patents, Trump, Viagra: My Good and Bad Calls of 2017 :




To my mind, the patent appeals board is an important brake on the pharmaceutical industry, which routinely abuses the patent system to extend monopolies on brand-name drugs long after the original patent has expired — a practice that costs Americans billions of dollars. On the other hand, big tech companies like Apple love the patent appeals board, which they use to pressure smaller companies and inventors whose innovations they want to use. Busting the patent is the cheapest and easiest way to accomplish that.

As you can see, I’m conflicted as to whether the patent appeals board should stay or go. My own solution would be to abolish the board and create an alternative patent system for the drug industry. I hope to lay out the details in a column soon.



As IPBiz pointed out in the 2015 post PTAB declines to institute IPR against Biogen's US 8,399,514 related to the MS drug Tecfidera , PTAB can be friendly to the pharma industry in some cases.

This particular case illustrated a flaw in the IPR system, that petition denials cannot be appealed, even when they should be.