This past Wednesday, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “how to make our patent system stronger.” This issue affects everyone, and in particular the drug prices we pay. So, it’s disappointing that the senators did not address an obvious point: For the patent system to be strong, patents must be correct, not riddled with errors. Otherwise, this causes serious problems.

Patents are at the center of the current drug pricing crisis. As government-granted privileges to sue competitors over their products, patents give industries such as the pharmaceutical industry protection from competition in the form of price-lowering generics. This frees them up to charge monopoly prices.