# Buy out the patent on a curative cancer drug and sell it at generic prices

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-reg-patent-buyout-prize/  
OnCo record `idea-reg-patent-buyout-prize` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Governments and philanthropies would pay a company a one-off lump sum, set by auction to reflect the drug's social value, for the patent on a cancer drug with a large benefit in a common cancer, then let generic makers supply it worldwide at competitive prices. A pilot fund would buy out one or two oncology patents.

## Summary

Patent buyouts (proposed by Kremer and others) replace monopoly pricing with a lump sum reflecting the drug's social value, after which the drug enters generic competition. Cancer drugs with large survival benefits in common cancers (for example adjuvant immunotherapy or a highly effective targeted agent) are candidates where the deadweight loss of high prices is largest. The proposal is a pilot fund, capitalised by a coalition of governments and philanthropies, that runs an auction-based valuation and buys out one or two oncology patents for global generic supply, with a prize element for the developer.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: A buyout of a widely used oncology drug increases the number of patients treated worldwide at least fivefold within three years at a total public cost lower than five years of monopoly spend in high-income markets alone.
- Rationale: For drugs with proven large benefit, the monopoly period wastes lives without serving its purpose of discovering whether the drug works; a lump sum preserves the innovation reward and removes the access barrier.
- Proposed test: Commission an independent valuation and feasibility study for two candidate drugs approaching mid-patent life, negotiate with the patent holder, and execute one buyout with global access tracking.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: philanthropy

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Prices and value): Prasad, De Jesús & Mailankody, The high price of anticancer drugs: origins, implications, barriers, solutions (Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2017): https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2017.31

## Connected records

- bottlenecks: [Most of the world has almost no cancer care](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-global-access/), [Prices and value](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-drug-pricing/)
- key papers: [The high price of anticancer drugs: origins, implications, barriers, solutions](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-prasad-nat-rev-clin-oncol/)

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