Original news and analysis on international IP policy
In wearable technology, product development converges with information and communication technology, presenting new opportunities for patents, as well as new risks, according to legal experts.
By Vinayak Bhardwaj - Not a day passes in America without news of a drug company raising prices on prescription drugs. Americans pay two to six times more for prescription drugs than those living in other developed countries, who earn the same income.
Patients around the world, in developing and developed countries, are encountering barriers to access to affordable medical products, in part due to patents and resulting high prices. This is occurring despite longstanding protections built into international trade rules to allow smaller economies to act on behalf of their people and make such medical products available regardless of patents. These protections are often referred to as flexibilities in the 1994 World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The prevailing view is that knowledge, understanding and use of them remains limited among policymakers and many potential beneficiaries, even as patent-strong nations and their industries work to narrow the reach and ability to use these flexibilities. In the face of this, global civil society in recent years have increasingly begun work to change the direction of this trend, with the ultimate goal of helping people everywhere - but particularly poor populations - obtain drugs they need that exist but are out of their reach. Now, the series of Intellectual Property Watch stories on this subject sponsored by Make Medicines Affordable have been translated into five languages.
Pharmaceutical companies have created an “untenable” situation by engaging in exploitative patenting practices to extend monopolies, increasing drug prices and delaying competition from more affordable generics, according to a new NGO report analysing drug prices.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity advisory bodies met last month to consider issues in preparation of the high-level Conference of the Parties later this year in Egypt. Among the topics were how to deal with genetic resources DNA information under the CBD protocol on access and benefit-sharing (Nagoya Protocol). Another was concerns met by countries implementing the protocol, in particular developing countries, and the need for capacity building.
An alleged thief caught stealing trade secrets from General Electric in New York hid the electronic files inside an innocent-looking digital picture of a sunset, according to the United States Department of Justice.
The Trump administration today announced it is considering raising its proposed tariffs from 10 to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. The move is another in an attempt to get China to change the way it treats US companies including by alleging forcing transfer of technology and intellectual property.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center has released an updated guide providing an overview of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes for intellectual property disputes. The guide provides instructions on how to use the ADR process that has helped resolve tens of thousands of legal disputes outside of the courts.
Antonio Campinos, whose term as president of the European Patent Office began on 1 July, has said he wants to focus on the effectiveness of the organisation, greater global cooperation and “staff engagement.”
Negotiations for a United Nations declaration on ending tuberculosis had drawn to a close earlier this week, with the United States seeming to succeed on a hardline position to keep mention of intellectual property rights and affordability of medicines out of the text. But nongovernmental reports say the draft has not been accepted by all members and that negotiations will have to be reopened.
Prof. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr writes: The conception of the Minimum Core Doctrine around low cost goods and services is unnecessarily restrictive. It is also out of line with concerns to meet pressing and priority health needs of the population. It departs from the original concept of obligations of immediate effect. It limits the consideration of the wide range of measures that national governments should take to expand the enjoyment of the right to health such as by reversing damaging policies or setting new ones. A salient example is policy choices governments might make in the area of intellectual protection provisions in free trade and investment agreements.
The Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) and the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) filed an opposition with the Indian Patent Office in Delhi on 21 July to prevent the granting of a patent to AbbVie on pibrentasvir, which forms part of Mavyret, their drug used to treat Hepatitis C, according to a press release.