KEI is holding a December 2, 2016 meeting on the delinkage of R&D costs from drug prices. The venue will be US Senate Hearing Room SD-106, Dirksen Office Building. The meeting will take place from 9:00am to 2:00pm. A copy… Continue Reading
KEI is interested in how regimes proposed in the IGC impact the economics of stewardship, curation and sharing of Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Genetic Resources (GR).
KEI generally opposes the creation of exclusive rights that can block innovations and access to knowledge and materials, in the context of Traditional Knowledge or Generic Resources.
However, benefit sharing does not require the granting of exclusive rights. Liability rule approaches seem to offer a better model.
USPTO has just published its new estimates of “IP-intensive” jobs for the US economy. The report is titled: Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: 2016 Update, and is available as a PDF file here. USPTO press release here:
I took a quick look at the report, and below are some initial bullet points:
I wanted to post a brief note about three separate mechanism to overcome patent monopolies in current US law. All are useful, in the right context, and all have some limits.
1. The Bayh-Dole March-In rights under 35 U.S.C. 203, as defined by 35 U.S.C. 201(f).
On June 30, 2016, the WIPO Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled received its 20th ratification, from Canada, and this will bring the Treaty into force September 30, 2016. The WIPO announcement was here. WIPO Director General Francis Gurry made a statement about the Marrakesh Treaty’s imminent entry into force in the video below:
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| David Hirschmann, US Chamber, claims efforts to curb high prices for cancer drugs are “a destructive course.” |
The US Chamber of Commerce might consider renaming itself the US/Swiss Chamber of Commerce, after their most recent attack on the Colombia Minister of Health (MoH) announcement that a “Declaration of Public Interest” would be issued for the patents on the cancer drug imatinib, held by the Swiss company Novartis. In the US Chamber’s defense of the Swiss drug company, they don’t mention the fact that Novartis has earned about $48 billion from sales of imatinib (sold by Novartis under the brand names Gleevec or Glivec) since the drug was put on the market, including more than $380 million per month in 2015. Continue Reading
Alfred Engelberg and Aaron Kesselheim have published an opinion article in Nature titled:
“Use the Bayh-Dole Act to lower drug prices for government healthcare programs,” Nature Medicine 22, 576 (2016) doi:10.1038/nm0616-576, Published online 07 June 2016.
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n6/abs/nm0616-576.html
Attached is a letter that KEI, Public Citizen, Oxfam America and Health GAP have sent to Senator Hatch, via the Senate Finance Committee, objecting to the pressure his office has put on Colombia over a compulsory license on patents held by Novartis for the cancer drug Gleevec. This refers to the accounts of pressure from Hatch’s office that are described in two letters from the Colombia Embassy in Washington, dated April 27 and April 28, which were recently leaked. Continue Reading
(More on government funded inventions here. Other KEI comments on NIH licenses are found here.) May 16th, 2016 Sally Hu, Ph.D., M.B.A., Senior Licensing and Patenting Manager, Office of Technology Transfer and Innovation Access, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial… Continue Reading
as PDF.