Today I attended a work session of the Maryland House of Delegates subcommittee on Health Facilitates and Pharmaceuticals of the Health and Government Operations Committee. I was there to testify in support of HB 666, a bill titled: Public Health – Expensive Drugs – Manufacturer Reporting and Drug Price Transparency Advisory Committee. (PDF version here).
Email records and memoranda released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in response to a Knowledge Ecology International Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States government opposed including India’s proposed agenda item on the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines for discussion at the 140th WHO Executive Board meeting.
The full set of documents, which was released to KEI without redaction, are available here:
On 2 February 2017, MEP Lola Sánchez Caldentey (Podemos, Spain) tabled a series of written questions to the European Commission on the positions taken by the European Union at the World Intellectual Property Organization on 14 December 2016 in relation to the United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines (UN HLP)
In December 2016, Brazil submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organization entitled, ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND COPYRIGHT (JOB/GC/113, JOB/IP/19), intended for circulation at the WTO’s General Council and the TRIPS Council. This paper will be discussed at the next session of the TRIPS Council under agenda item 13, “Work Programme on Electronic Commerce” (1-2 March 2017).
February 15, 2017, the USPTO ruled that 12 genome-editing CRISPR-Cas9 patents and one patent application assigned to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT did not interfere with a patent application from scientists at the University of California. A copy of the ruling is available here.
Following the ruling by the USPTO that the Broad Institute and the University of California both issued statements, as did several firms with an interest in the dispute.
On February 9, 2017, KEI filed written comments to the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s Special 301 Review process.
The Special 301 Review is an annual process carried out by the USTR to, “to identify countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection.”
In December 2016, during the twilight of President Barack Obama’s 44th presidency, the World Trade Organization (WTO) conducted a Trade Policy Review (TPR) of the United States of America. All members of the WTO are subject to review under the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). The TPRM takes place in the “Trade Policy Review Body which is actually the WTO General Council — comprising the WTO’s full membership — operating under special rules and procedures” (Source: WTO, Trade Policy Reviews: Brief Introduction).
Bayh-Dole Act and difference between March-In Rights and the world wide royalty free rights in patents KEI Briefing Note 2017:1 When the United States federal government funds research that results in patents, it obtains rights, either directly or through contracts,… Continue Reading
On 31 January 2017 the WHO Secretariat published the “Draft decision resulting from informal consultations” on the Overall programme review of the global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and intellectual property (EB140/CONF./7 Rev.1). This can be found here: http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB140/B140_CONF7Rev1-en.pdf
The chapeau to this decision notes:
* (The author thanks the PHM Watchers for their notes of the WHO EB140 deliberations).