Congress protects song lyrics for nearly a century. Yet life-saving medical inventions, the result of years of scientific risk and billions in investment, expire after just 20 years from filing. That imbalance isn’t just hard to justify. It’s quietly driving up drug prices and weakening incentives for innovation where America needs it most.
Patents are the backbone of scientific and engineering progress, but in high-risk regulated sectors such as pharmaceuticals, the current patent term fails to reflect economic reality. Developing a single new drug routinely costs well over $2 billion and often takes more than a decade before it ever reaches patients. By the time regulators approve a treatment, years of patent protection may already be gone. Congress should extend patent terms by 10 years, bringing them to 30, to better align incentives with the realities of modern innovation, and ease long-term pressure on drug prices.
