America’s Technology-Neutral Patent System Is a Competitive Advantage: Congress Should Protect It

Congress may soon abandon a principle that has guided the U.S. legal system for generations: the ability to obtain and enforce patent rights should not depend on the type of technology being invented. Straying from this core tenet risks weakening a key competitive advantage of the American innovation economy.

Problematic Proposals

Lawmakers are considering three proposals: the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act (MAPIA), the Drug Competition Enhancement Act, and the Eliminating Thickets to Increase Competition Act (ETHIC Act), which are intended to accelerate generic or biosimilar competition. Yet there is no evidence that they would meaningfully lower patients’ out of pocket costs; instead, these proposals would impose new disclosure and certification requirements, curtail patent enforcement rights, and impede the development and launch of improved products, all while disproportionately targeting the biopharmaceutical sector and risking U.S. leadership in medical innovation.

For all of American history, the fundamental standards governing patentability and patent enforcement have been applied consistently without regard to the field of technology. Whether an invention is a medicine, semiconductor, software application, or manufacturing process, patent examiners evaluate whether it is new, non-obvious, and useful, and courts apply the same legal principles when those patent rights are enforced.

That technology-neutral approach has been one of the strengths of the U.S. innovation ecosystem. No Congress can reliably predict which scientific discoveries will become commercially important, which startups will succeed, or where the next transformative technology will emerge. By applying technology-neutral rules, the patent system provides innovators and investors with predictability while allowing markets, rather than politicians, to allocate capital and reward promising ideas.

The proposed bills would depart from this longstanding approach by weakening patent protection and imposing enforcement restrictions solely against pharmaceutical inventions.

The ETHIC Act would make it harder to enforce certain biopharmaceutical patents the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has already examined and issued simply because they are tied by a terminal disclaimer, a routine practice used across all technology sectors. MAPIA would impose disclosure and certification requirements on biopharmaceutical innovators that do not apply to any other industry. The Drug Competition Enhancement Act would subject companies to heightened scrutiny when they introduce improved versions of existing medicines, yet improved products are a common and widely accepted form of innovation across virtually all other technology sectors.

Taken together, the bills would make the legal treatment of patents depend less on the invention itself and more on the industry in which it is commercialized.

The Outcome: Long Term Uncertainty

But the implications extend far beyond biopharmaceuticals. If Congress determines today that pharmaceutical patents warrant special restrictions, future policymakers may well apply the same reasoning to artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, or technologies that have not yet emerged. Over time, the patent system would drift from consistent legal principles toward balkanized industry-by-industry fiat, injecting uncertainty into innovation markets.

Technology neutrality is also an important international principle. The World Trade Organization’s intellectual-property agreement requires patent rights to be available without discrimination as to the field of technology. For decades, the United States has leaned into this WTO requirement, urging trading partners to avoid technology-specific patent discrimination and to maintain predictable intellectual property frameworks.

Creating pharmaceutical-specific patent restrictions at home would undermine America’s credibility in those discussions and encourage other countries to impose industry-specific limitations of their own. The result would be a global “race to the bottom” in which patent protections become increasingly dependent on political and industrial preferences.

It’s also a particularly risky time for Congress to send such a signal. Biopharmaceutical research is increasingly global, and countries are competing aggressively to attract investment, scientific talent, and research activity. China, in particular, has identified biotechnology as a strategic industry and is investing heavily to build its innovation ecosystem. For example, China’s share of global clinical trials for new medicines has jumped from approximately 5% a decade ago to nearly 30%today. As competition for biomedical leadership intensifies, policymakers should be looking for ways to strengthen America’s innovation environment rather than create new sources of uncertainty.

Keep What’s Working

Congress should be cautious before abandoning the longstanding principle that patent rights should not depend on the type of technology invented. Our current patent system that applies the same patentability and enforcement standards to medicines, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and other inventions has helped make the United States the world’s leading innovation economy.

Preserving that technology-neutral framework will support investment, strengthen American competitiveness, and help ensure that the next generation of medical breakthroughs is developed here rather than elsewhere.

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