Original news and analysis on international IP policy
An article in the newly launched Journal of Health Diplomacy about the stalled progress at the World Health Organization for a medical research and development (R&D) convention discusses systemic failures in global health policy.
The latest instalment of the World Intellectual Property Organization seminar series titled “The Economics of Intellectual Property” covered the issue of product patents in the pharmaceutical industry. Discussion focussed on the economics of intellectual property rights and how pharmaceutical patent protection might not be the sole culprit in the access to innovation problem.
The United States Supreme Court in a five to three decision today found that settlement agreements by branded pharmaceutical companies involving payments to generic companies to delay their cheaper drugs' entry into the market may not be immune from antitrust scrutiny but are not "presumptively" unlawful. The case was sent back to lower court.
Last Thursday, the United States Supreme Court overturned more than 30 years of precedents and ruled that isolated genes cannot be patented. They are products of nature and thus not patent-eligible subject matter, the court unanimously held in Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. This ruling puts the US at odds with most other nations, which allow genes to be patented. But because other major nations grant narrower gene patents, the net effect of Myriad will be to shift the US position on gene patents closer to that of other nations.
Prices of cancer drugs must be lowered to be affordable for patients and to maintain sound long-term healthcare policies, according to a group of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) experts in a recent Blood journal editorial.
Three Geneva-based international organisations are continuing their collaboration on issues of health and innovation policy as it cuts across intellectual property rights by planning a 5 July symposium on "changing business models" in medical innovation.
The United States Supreme Court came to a decision yesterday on the case of Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., striking down Myriad’s patent on isolating human genes from the bloodstream.
The United Nations Human Rights Council today adopted a resolution urging governments to encourage technology development and transfer and to apply intellectual property rights measures in ways that avoid creating barriers to trade in “affordable, safe, efficacious and quality medicines.” The resolution includes references to IP flexibilities in international trade law and to “delinkage” of R&D costs with the price of health products.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released an updated guidance document on pandemic influenza risk management, which includes the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework for the sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits that was discussed by member states during the 66th World Health Assembly (WHA) in May.
A recent Geneva-based study found that so-called evergreening practices utilised by drug manufacturers are successful in protecting profits by maintaining company market share and offsetting generic competition and cost containment policies.
Thirteen years after publication of the landmark report, “Tobacco Company Strategies to Undermine Tobacco Control Activities at the World Health Organization,” little has changed and industry manipulations continue, one of the lead authors has said.
Lower-income countries receive much less attention in terms of clinical trial research, according to a study published in this month’s World Health Organization (WHO) Bulletin. The study also underscored the value and importance the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) provides as a resource for evaluating the distribution of clinical trials around the world, and for providing information for future policy on health R&D.