AbbVie wields at least 88 patents to guard Imbruvica, its expensive cancer treatment, against competition from generic drugmakers, according to recent analysis from the nonprofit I-MAK.
The North Chicago, Ill.-based drugmaker filed its first patent in 2006, which it followed up with a flurry of ongoing patent applications. More than half of the company's 165 patent applications for Imbruvica were filed after the drug was approved by the FDA in 2013, and most of the patents protect formulas rather than the treatment's active ingredient.
AbbVie will have exclusive rights to sell Imbruvica, which boasts a $174,000 list price, until at least 2036. This patent exclusivity also means consumers could end up paying $41 billion more on the treatment by then, according to I-MAK's analysis.
"It goes against the idea that drug companies say there will be no investments in innovation without patents as incentives," Tahir Amin, I-MAK's executive director, told STAT. "In this instance, most of the applications were filed after FDA approval [in 2013] and most of those patents were filed by AbbVie, even though the company bought the drug two years later. There's probably more innovation in the legal drafting of the patents than the drug research.”