Mpango87

I wouldnt think the problem with efficiency is patent prosecution. The issue is FDA approval generally takes a long time to evaluate safety and efficacy of a drug. If a patent is still pending, a drug company could push forward selling a drug if the FDA has approved it.

I say this as a patent attorney. I know it can take forever to prosecute a patent. Usually a drug patent has less than 10 years or less than 5 years before expiration when a drug is finally approved.

Very interesting points you made. I hadn't considered that. I actually only do chemical patent prosecution now, but eventually down the road would like to get permanently into biotech/pharma patent prosecution. My education has familiarized me with drug development however. I point this out to say, my experience with biotech/pharma patent prosecution is fairly limited, but I'm familiar with drug development.

In the CIP example you mentioned, are you saying an applicant would file a CIP with art cited in the parent case to get around prior art? I interned with a biotech company that had a competitor revise their claims so the biotech company would infringe. I'm not sure if it was a continuation app, an amendment they made to original claims, or what, but they wanted to stifle the competition. In my opinion, the drugs were different. I believe it worked though.

Uhhh this is concerning because my girlfriend has these symptoms and every doctor has been useless.

Yea that's exactly the problem. The healthcare system infuriates me. Luckily she just got hired by a company where she was a contractor before so her health insurance is going to be way better. She intends to see a specialist then.

That's outside my knowledge area tbh. I haven't had much experience with software patents. My best guess is existing software used for analyzing covid-19 itself or possible treatments already exists and are therefore protected by existing IP.