Antimicrobial patent restoration would encourage development of old leads -- Rockefeller's Lederberg.

ANTIBIOTIC PATENT RESTORATION WOULD ENCOURAGE DEVELOPMENT, ROCKEFELLER RESEARCHER Joshua Lederberg, PhD, told an American Medical Association press conference on infectious diseases Jan. 16 in Washington, D.C. Lederberg remarked that pharmaceutical companies identified "tens of thousands" of antibiotic compounds in the 1950s and 1960s, although "only a few of them could be selected for retail development." Now, "we have all of these chemical entities which were patented, whose patents have now expired, and it is very, very difficult to motivate reinvestments in those older promising candidates because you would have a legal problem for those investments to be protected."