Feb 24, 2017 – U.S. History, Experiences, and Prospects of Compulsory Licensing of Medical Patents

On Friday, February 24, 2017, KEI hosted a meeting exploring compulsory licensing in the United States.

Title: History, Experiences, and Prospects of Compulsory Licensing on Medical Patents in the United States
Date: Friday February 24, 2017
Location: Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health
700 Second St. NE (near Union Station)
Washington, DC 20002

A full agenda, with speaker names and the time for the panels, is available here:

The event featured presentations and roundtable discussions on the following topics:

1. A review of all U.S. legislation proposed, enacted and/or repealed on the compulsory licensing of patents from the 19th Century to the present.
2. A discussion of the compulsory licensing of patents under 28 USC 1498(a), the statute that covers use of patents “by or for the United States without license of the owner.”
3. A discussion of the non-voluntary use of patents in court cases involving requests for permanent injunctions as a remedy to infringement, under the standards set out in the by the U.S. Supreme Court in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006) .
4. A discussion of the experience with the Bayh-Dole Act march-in provisions.
5. A review of compulsory licensing statutes in 12 industrialized countries.
6. A concluding discussion about the need for new statutory authority to grant compulsory licenses on patents, with references to (a) US government negotiations on prices of drugs, (b) the broader need to curb excessive prices of drugs, and (c) the role of compulsory licensing in improving access to research tools, diagnostic tests, and upstream technologies such as CRISPR Genome Editing, and for follow-on inventions.

The following presentations are available as PDFs:

• Zack Struver on the history of compulsory licensing.
• Andrew Goldman on eBay compulsory licenses.
• Allen Black on Fabrazyme.
• Aaron Kesselheim on march-in rights.
• James Love on the Bayh-Dole Act march-in rights provisions.
• Fred Abbott on non-voluntary patent licensing in international law.

We believe the topic of compulsory licensing is timely and important as the government considers a range of options to address concerns over high drug prices.

Many patient and consumer groups want to ensure that in disputes over drug prices, the patent monopoly is at risk, rather than the patient’s access.