Steve Brachmann

On April 30, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it was expanding its campaign against allegedly improper patent listings in the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) Orange Book. In letters to 10 pharmaceutical companies, the FTC disputed the relevancy of more than 300 patents protecting aspects of drugs that have received market approval from the FDA. While the FTC claims that such action is necessary to improve Americans’ access to affordable prescription drugs, pharmaceutical industry representatives have questioned the propriety of this enforcement campaign given two decades of requests from industry stakeholders for greater clarity on Orange Book listings.

On Thursday, April 25, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held an open meeting during which the agency’s commissioners voted 3-2 to restore net neutrality rules that reclassifies Internet broadband providers as common carriers, dramatically increasing regulatory oversight on such companies operating in the United States. This partisan victory for the Democratic Party membership of the FCC is raising opposition from taxpayer advocacy groups and Republican lawmakers who believe that the return of net neutrality rules will do much to harm America’s leadership in broadband Internet.