{"entity":{"id":"idea-reg-patent-buyout-prize","kind":"idea","name":"Buy out the patent on a curative cancer drug and sell it at generic prices","aka":[],"tldr":"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.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Prices and value): Prasad, De Jesús & Mailankody, The high price of anticancer drugs: origins, implications, barriers, solutions (Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2017)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2017.31"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-drug-pricing","b-global-access"],"keyPapers":["paper-prasad-nat-rev-clin-oncol"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"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.","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","cost":"large","horizonYears":5},"route":"/ideas/idea-reg-patent-buyout-prize/","neighbours":{"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-global-access","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Most of the world has almost no cancer care","route":"/bottlenecks/b-global-access/"},{"id":"b-drug-pricing","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Prices and value","route":"/bottlenecks/b-drug-pricing/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-prasad-nat-rev-clin-oncol","kind":"paper","name":"The high price of anticancer drugs: origins, implications, barriers, solutions","route":"/key-papers/paper-prasad-nat-rev-clin-oncol/"}]}}