Knowledge Ecology International

This is a comment on the WIPO- commissioned report on the patent landscape for the WHO essential medicines list, published on April 11th, 2016. The report is titled: Patent-based Analysis of the World Health Organization’s 2013 Model List of Essential Medicines, by Reed F. Beall and Amir Attaran, both at the University of Ottawa, Canada. This is is the third collaboration between WIPO’s Thomas (Tom) Bombelles (Head, Global Health, WIPO) and Attaran on the same topic — the patenting of medicines in developing countries.

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[First reported by Politico] On April 9, 2016, the Obama Administration sent a document to Congress defending the TPP against criticism from the pharmaceutical industry that they did not get enough from the deal. Continue Reading →

Draft, revised April 12, 2016.

2015:4 KEI Briefing Note: The Tufts estimates of the risk adjusted out-of-pocket costs to develop a new drug.
April 12, 2016
James Love

This is a briefing note on the 2016 Tufts study titled: Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: New estimates of R&D costs, co-authored by three industry consultants, Joseph A. DiMasi, Henry G. Grabowski and Ronald W. Hansen. [J.A. DiMasi et al. Journal of Health Economics 47 (2016)].

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The following is the KEI comment to the NIH proposed exclusive license to Great Lakes Neuroscience for a patent on Multiple Sclerosis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and certain other CNS Disorders. (PDF version here). KEI asks the NIH for certain information about the proposed license, and also asks the NIH to include provisions in the license that protect consumers in both the United States and developing countries.

For the United States, KEI asks that prices be:

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On Thursday, 7 April 2016, Dr. Rob Davies, Minister of Trade and Industry of South Africa, delivered a keynote address at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) International Conference on Intellectual Property and Development.

On compulsory licensing, in relation to voluntary licensing, the Minister remarked:

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The Fordham international IP conference just concluded a panel on patents for second uses of medical inventions, and the discussions illustrated once more the degree to which the patent system is poorly designed to address this issue.

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These were my notes from my talk on Thursday morning at the annual Fordham International IP conference, which is organized by Professor Hugh Hansen. The panel was titled “Examination of TPP & TTIP.”

What is wrong with the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)?

The TPP was negotiated with asymmetric secrecy. Not from industry, but from the public. Nearly all of the real experts in IP policy were in the dark over the actual language of the texts. We delegated too much power to government trade negotiators and to lobbyists.

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