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# Cut Drug Costs Through ‘Government Patent Use’: Professors
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/cut-drug-costs-through-government-patent-use-professors/
- Published: 2016-05-05T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T21:00:08.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5135586

Professors **Amy Kapcynzki** (Yale Law School) and **Aaron Kesselheim** (Harvard Medical School) propose that the federal government make some drugs more affordable by invoking the existing “government patent use” law. [Writing](http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/5/791.abstract?etoc&ref=fdaweb.com) in *Health Affairs*, the two say that the high cost of patent-protected prescription drugs can strain budgets and curb the widespread use of new medicines.

Using the law, they write, would permit the government to procure generic versions of important patent-protected drugs and in exchange pay the patent-holding companies reasonable royalties to compensate them for research and development. “This would allow patients in federal programs, and perhaps beyond, to be treated with inexpensive generic medicines according to clinical need, meaning that many more patients could be reached for no more, and perhaps far less, money than is currently spent,” they say. “Another benefit would be a reduction in the opportunity for companies to extract monopoly profits that far exceed their risk-adjusted costs of research and development.”