Slides from the KEI testimony at July 18, 2017 FDA hearing on drug pricing
Attached are the slides I used in today’s FDA hearing on the Hatch-Waxman Act and drug pricing. (link to PDF version of slides) Continue Reading
Author: James Love
NAFTA negotiating objectives released by USTR
This afternoon USTR published a summary of the negotiating objectives for NAFTA. A press release is here. The summary report is here.
The intellectual property objectives include this welcome statement, which reflects positions taken in the past by USTR, but it not something we took for granted in the Trump Administration, and we are happy to see it.
KEI response to Sanofi letter to Senators who asked Army for hearing on Zika vaccine license
Last week, Sanofi sent a letter to six U.S. Senators. (Copies here). We responded today. Our letter is attached here.
Some news reports about the Sanofi letter.
- Ed Silverman, Sanofi denies rejecting Army request for a fair price on a Zika vaccine, Statnews, 17 July 2017
2017: Senator Angus King amendment to National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on federally funded drugs, vaccines
Senator Angus King proposed an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the Department of Defense (DoD) to authorize third parties to use inventions that benefited from DoD research funding, when prices exceed the median price charge in the seven largest economies with per capita incomes at least half the per capita income in the United States.
Groups, individuals write to Senator Wyden, appalled at pressure on India over drug patents
On June 23, 2017, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Richard Neal (D-MA) wrote to President Trump about “trade and investment barriers” in India. The four members of Congress are respectively the chair and ranking members of the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means Committee.
June 27-29 USTR NAFTA renegotiation hearings schedule
The latest version of the USTR NAFTA renegotiation hearings schedule is out. USTR has a page for the NAFTA hearings, here, which now has the a link to the witness schedule.
There are 26 panels of witnesses over 2.5 days. Doing the math, each witness seems to have less than 10 minutes, including questions from the panel.
The Draft Executive Order on Drug prices
Attached here is the draft Trump Executive Order, titled “REDUCING THE COST OF MEDICAL PRODUCTS AND ENHANCING AMERICAN BIOMEDICAL INNOVATION,” as leaked by Politico today.
Comment on proposed Trump Executive Order on drug prices
I wrote an 1800 word comment on the proposed Trump Executive Order on drug prices in medium, here. The bulk of the comment focused on the first of the “principles” and “talking points” reported by Emily Kopp in Kaiser Health News.
KEI comments to USTR on the negotiating objectives for the modernization of NAFTA
USTR has a request for comments on negotiating objectives for the moderation of NAFTA, docket USTR-2017-0006, and will hold a public hearing on June 27, 2017. KEI filed a set of comments and a request to testify, available here.
KEI’s comments cover an eclectic set of issues.
Apple obtains compulsory license on patents owned by WARF, by District Court Judge in Wisconsin
On June 6, 2017, Judge William Martin Conley, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, issued a compulsory license allowing Apple Computers to use a patent it had infringed, owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), in return for an ongoing royally. Apple was found to infringe U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752, titled “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer. WARF asked for a permanent injunction to prevent future infringement. Continue Reading