Feasibility study on a TDR pooled fund for R&D to be released on 20 February 2016

In May 2014, the 67th World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) passed Decision WHA67(15) providing WHO the mandate to explore the feasibility of creating a voluntary pooled fund fund on R&D hosted by the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). The Decision outlined three principles guiding the consideration of the pooled fund:

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Xtandi 2016 March-In Request

Today Knowledge Ecology International and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health, asking that they exercise either their royalty-free, non-exclusive license or federal “march-in” rights to end the monopoly on an expensive prostate cancer drug, enzalutamide, marketed as Xtandi by Astellas, a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

Xtandi was invented at UCLA on federal grants from the NIH and DoD.

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Knowledge Ecology International joins amicus brief on non-copyrightability of model laws and statutes

Washington, DC — On January 11, 2016, Knowledge Ecology International joined Public Knowledge and the American Library Association in an amicus curiae brief that argued that the contents of model laws, once enacted into statute, cannot be protected by copyright. The brief was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of ASTM International v. Public.Resource.Org.

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