http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/29/zombie-patents-and-their-toll-healthcare-system Comments for "Zombie patents and their toll on the healthcare system" en http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/29/zombie-patents-and-their-toll-healthcare-system <p><!--paging_filter--> <p><a href="http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/zombie-sf-photo-200px.gif" title="zombie-sf-photo-200px.gif" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/zombie-sf-photo-200px.gif" alt="zombie-sf-photo-200px.gif" /></a>Patents generally have a fixed lifetime, but some can linger on like zombies, thanks to clever lawyering that extends their life unnaturally.</p> <p>Zombies&#8217; cost to the healthcare system can be significant. Genentech&#8217;s Cabilly patent, for instance, should have expired in 2006, but instead stands to cost buyers of antibody drugs $1 billion or more over the next decade. We <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/02/28/unnaturally-extended-patents-they-cost-the-healthcare-system-billions-but-just-wont-die/" rel="nofollow">have the skinny</a> over at VentureBeat Life Sciences.</p> <p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Venturebeat?a=wF0uID" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Venturebeat?i=wF0uID" border="0"></img></a></p> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/29/zombie-patents-and-their-toll-healthcare-system#comments Business &amp; Finance Business and Technology co:Genentech zombie patents Breaking News Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:10:32 -0800 Venture Beat 102293 at http://www.thestandard.com