The innovation trap: How pharma weaponizes a word to extend monopolies The patent system has become more of an exclusivity system for financial investment, not invention

https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/26/humira-patents-abbvie-innovation-pharma-monopoly-excerpt/?utm_campaign=the_readout&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--NqIYrTSeyL_QWImwocq__kMwvu4Uqd-XBN-0WjHYurxeY8CGB8KyAoDdbQSPtt3xGkIPaEqH3CAMQPbQubsqSKwyMnA&_hsmi=420539245&utm_content=420539245&utm_source=hs_email By Tahir Amin and Rohit MalpaniMay 26, 2026 Amin and Malpani are the authors of “Pharma Monopoly: The Battle for the Future of Medicines,” out now from Polity, from which this essay is adapted Humira became pharma's masterclass in monopoly Rather than using it to protect innovation, biopharma has transformed the patent system into a machine designed to maximize profits and delay competition, opine patent policy experts Tahir Amin and Rohit Malpani. To them, Humira is the clearest example: After the blockbuster drug’s original patent expired in 2016, AbbVie built a thicket of 136 patents around dosing tweaks, manufacturing methods, and additional disease uses. This extended its monopoly for years, generating $114 billion in extra revenue — and the drug’s price climbed 470%. Congressional investigations later revealed McKinsey consultants actively helped devise strategies to block biosimilar competition. Much of what pharma calls “innovation” today, Amin and Malpani write, consists of legally repackaging existing science into incremental changes that offer little therapeutic benefit. “For policy-makers and anyone else affected by the pharmaceutical medicines system, a 50-year fealty to the god of innovation should force some serious questioning of the system,” they write in this essay, adapted from their book, "Pharma Monopoly: The Battle for the Future of Medicines."