Gilead Sciences Defeats the CDC

Drug makers are often extorted by patent trolls, but it’s something else when the troll is the U.S. government. In a landmark case, a federal jury on Tuesday rejected the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s gambit to extract enormous royalties from Gilead Sciences Inc. for a fictitious claim of government invention.

Patent disputes can be complicated, but the one between the CDC and Gilead is straightforward. Gilead invented a breakthrough HIV drug. Many years later the U.S. government sought to enforce dubious patents on the drug and demanded royalties.