Trump administration mulls charging patent holders 1%-5% fee, WSJ reports

The White House is weighing a plan to raise tens of billions of dollars with a new fee that would overhaul the patent system, a radical move that would likely draw pushback from businesses, the Wall Street Journal’s Amrith Ramkumar reports. Officials at the Commerce Department are weighing charging patent holders 1%-5% of their overall patent value, a change that could boost fees, the author says, citing people familiar with the matter. Publicly traded companies in the pharma space, which relies on patents, include AstraZeneca (AZN), Bristol Myers (BMY), Eli Lilly (LLY), GSK (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck (MRK), Novartis (NVS), Pfizer (PFE), Roche (RHHBY) and Sanofi (SNY).