Author: James Love

These were comments KEI provided to the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), for its consultation on expanding the mandate to include drugs to treat the hepatitis C virus.

To: consultation@medicinespatentpool.org.
Date: August 28, 2015
Re: Comments by James Love on behalf of KEI for the consultation regarding the MPP mandate to expand into HCV (and other diseases).

KEI has submitted joint comments with UAEM in this consultation. Here on behalf of KEI I make a few additional points.

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Five groups, the Authors Alliance, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and New Media Rights have written to Ambassador Froman at USTR, asking that the TPP not adopt measures that would prevent the Congress from enacting legislation to limit the remedies for copyright infringement that were proposed by the Register of Copyrights in June 2015, to expand access to orphan copyrighted works.

A copy of the letter is available here:

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On the topic of the TPP and copyright, KEI has sent a letter to Maria Pallante, the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs for USPTO, and Nancy Weiss, Senior Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Executive Office of the President.

KEI asked these agencies to address certain issues in the TPP intellectual property chapter that relate to access to copyright issues, with a focus on orphan works, and uses by governments.

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Attached are two documents from Mylan regarding their concerns about the TPP. The first is an April 13, 2015 10 page letter from Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, to USTR head Michael Froman. (Copy here). The second is a table of inconsistencies between the TPP and US law (Copy here).

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Attached below is a letter KEI sent to Emily Bleimund, Senior Policy Advisor for International Trade for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and several other U.S. trade officials. The letter addresses three issues in the TPP text:

1. There is a need for exceptions to exclusive rights in pharmaceutical and biologic drug test data.
2. WTO standards for compulsory licenses should not be modified as part of a secret negotiation, or constrained by a 3-step test.

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