Original news and analysis on international IP policy
NEW YORK -- World leaders and senior representatives came together today for the first-ever High-Level Meeting on the Fight to End Tuberculosis at United Nations headquarters in New York. At the meeting, heads of state adopted a political declaration with commitments to accelerate action and funding to end the tuberculosis epidemic by 2030.
A new initiative, the Patent Information Initiative for Medicines (Pat-INFORMED), was launched today at the World Intellectual Property Organization to help health agencies procure medicines. The collaboration between WIPO and the pharmaceutical industry, a free and open-access database, provides information on the legal status of patents on approved medicines.
Brazil yesterday signed an agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), through which the country will share patent information with the MPP. The Brazilian IP office joins several others in an effort to regular update of the MPP's database on patent information. Separately, high-level representatives of Latin American and Iberian countries met on the side of the annual World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies taking place this week.
The yearly World Intellectual Property Organization General Assemblies opened today. WIPO Director General Francis Gurry in his opening report to the member states underlined the rising demand for intellectual property protection, which continues to offer a healthy financial situation for the fee-financed organisation, but called on delegates to look into the future and start discussing questions linked to the use of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.
World Intellectual Property Organization members gather next week for their annual General Assemblies. Among the topics to be discussed is which countries will host new WIPO external offices in 2018-2019. Also on the agenda are the reports from various WIPO committees, with some raising the prospect of convening high-level final negotiations on international treaties next year. A number of side events and exhibitions are also scheduled, focusing on issues like health, women, and innovation.
Christopher M. Holman writes: Despite the important role of intellectual property rights in incentivizing innovation, the patenting of pharmaceutical innovation is frequently accused of impeding access to medicine. Criticism of the prevailing patent regime has focused in particular on patents directed towards follow-on pharmaceutical innovation, i.e., innovation that seeks to improve upon existing pharmaceuticals and their use in treating patients. Patents on follow-on innovation are often derided as “secondary” patents, with the implication that the underlying inventions are somehow lesser in nature than the subject matter claimed in “primary” patents, i.e., the drug active ingredient per se. While implicitly acknowledging the legitimacy of primary patents, critics of so-called secondary patents contend that patents on follow-on innovation allow drug innovators to “evergreen” their products, i.e., to extend the period of patent exclusivity beyond the expiration of any original patent on the drug active ingredient, and in doing so contribute to the high cost of drugs, thereby limiting the ability of patients to access the drugs upon which they have come to rely.
It is now acknowledged by most that the issue of access to medicines is not only a concern for developing and low-income countries, but a global challenge. The World Health Organization was tasked at its last annual assembly in May to draft a roadmap for access for the next five years. A preliminary draft of the roadmap was discussed last week with member states and stakeholders. The roadmap includes 10 priority activity areas, and a number of deliverables.
The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a forum of United States and European Union consumer organisations, yesterday released a resolution calling on policymakers “to break out of the current dysfunctional and harmful trade-off between innovation and access,” and to delink research and development (R&D) from monopoly pricing.
Noci, the fictional city attacked by malevolent hackers during ICON2018, was saved and the challenge was won by a Swiss team. What is a hacker, how do they define themselves? Two members of ICON, a young non-governmental organisation in Geneva, answered that question for Intellectual Property Watch, with the same affirmation: a hacker is first and foremost a curious mind. View the IP-Watch video interviews below.
After weeks of uncertainty among civil society organisations as to whether or not the United Nations political declaration on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) would uphold language on intellectual property flexibilities for affordable access to medicines, the document was finalised today with even stronger language affirming the use of these flexibilities.