Original news and analysis on international IP policy
[Updated] The European Patent Office (EPO) on 13 September ruled in favour of pharmaceutical company Gilead and maintained the company's patent on hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir. The patent, however, is maintained in an amended form. Civil society involved in the case expressed dismay over the outcome and its potential effect on European drug prices.
Marcela Fogaça Vieira and Pedro Villardi write: The Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) has mysteriously cancelled the judgment of the most important case regarding intellectual property and health ever to be decided by the court. On 28 June, the date of the judgment was set for 6 September. The cancellation occurred on the eve of the judgment, something very rare in the practice of the Court. The lack of decision on the case only benefits the transnational companies awarded with hundreds of undue monopolies. Just a few days before, the President of the STF - Judge Carmem Lucia - had a meeting with Interfarma, the association of multinational pharmaceutical companies in Brazil.
A new study by researchers at the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital reveals that generic drug companies have been successful about 50% of the time when challenging patents covering FDA-approved pharmaceutical products via a new, administrative review procedure of patent validity created by Congress called “inter partes review.”
Thousands of students have urged a major research university in the United States to drop a patent claim in India related to an important cancer medicine, with the aim of making affordable versions available.
The governments of Cuba and Indonesia today chose not to appeal a June ruling at the World Trade Organization that upheld Australia's law requiring tobacco products sold in the country to be packaged without logos or other trademarked designs. That leaves Honduras and the Dominican Republic alone in their appeals of the decision.
The Dominican Republic has followed Honduras in appealing a decision by a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel that found Australia's tobacco plain packaging law to be allowable under WTO rules. Cuba and Indonesia also had cases against Australia but so far have not appealed.
In an appeal of a recent World Trade Organization dispute panel ruling, Honduras detailed a list of alternate interpretations of the decision to uphold Australia’s tobacco plain packaging measures. Honduras called on the WTO Appellate Body to “reverse the Panel’s findings and conclusions,” claiming that the ruling was “not the result of an objective assessment of the matter.”
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.
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.
The strategy was breathtaking in its boldness. Just days before the USPTO was to hear a challenge to Allergan Inc.’s patents on a dry-eye drug, Restasis, the company transferred those patents to a Native American tribe; the tribe then sought to dismiss the USPTO proceedings by asserting sovereign immunity. Following this action, a number of other patentees made similar transfers to Native tribes, in order to protect their patents. More patentees were poised to do so, should this ploy prove effective. It, however, did not. On 20 July, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the tribe’s sovereign immunity did not protect its patents from USPTO review. The ruling thus kept intact a key component of America’s patent system.