How Misaligned Incentives Are Now Killing Us

Today, like so much of the rest of the world, the United States is faced with many shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic, including personal protective equipment, basic medical supplies, and qualified medical staff. Of course, the lack of treatments or vaccine is a huge problem. Another secular problem is the lack of a quick, inexpensive, reliable test for the virus. But a test for the virus is a diagnostic method, and that is a big problem for U.S. patent laws because diagnostic methods are simply not patent eligible in the United States. This is also a big problem for the world because ever since the veil of patent eligibility was lifted for the life sciences sector in 1981 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the U.S. has dominated the biotechnology sector, specifically, and life science sectors more generally speaking. In 1981, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates saying that what was created by man could be patented, and if it could be owned it could be invested in, and investors rushed in and the biotechnology industry that we know today was born. But what the Supreme Court gave they can, and ultimately did, take away.

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