How Amgen Lost the PCSK9 Patent War
Patent law rests on a simple covenant: inventors reveal their secrets, and society grants them temporary monopolies in return. But some companies want the monopoly without the showing. They want the treasure. They don’t want to draw the map. In 2014, Amgen had developed evolocumab—a protein comprising 1,328 amino acids arranged with such precision that changing even one could eliminate its function entirely. This antibody binds to PCSK9, a protein that destroys the liver’s cholesterol-clearing