Author: James Love

In efforts to introduce the topic of innovation inducement prizes into the discussions about drug development, there are inevitably questions about the relationship between grants and prizes.

In some cases, prizes are being offered as a reform of “pull” mechanisms, and can usefully be compared to the grant of a marketing monopoly, which is the primary pull mechanism used today. In this context, a question is, should drug or vaccine developers be rewarded with monopolies or cash? And if cash, where does the money come from, and how much money is given to a particular project?

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The USTR report in now out, here.

The following are KEI comments:

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The following are some of the “tweets” on the new USTR 301 list:

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MICROSOFT CORPORATION, FORM 10-Q For the Quarter Ended March 31, 2009

Item 1A. Risk Factors
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and the trading price of our common stock.

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KEI filed comments with the WHO Expert Working Group. A copy is available here.

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These were my tweets yesterday from the Fordham/Cambridge IPR event:

# Fordham event in Cambridge, UK. Michael Keplinger from WIPO said treaty for reading disabled “would take years and not solve the problem”

# At Fordham/Cambridge IP event, Luc Devigne of DG Trade says ACTA membership will be “enlarged,” become standard for developing countries.

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On April 8, 2009, the FDA announced it had awarded Novartis a one-time priority review voucher (PRV) to use towards a future new drug application, for Coartem, a malaria drug. While the PRV was designed as an incentive to develop new drugs, Coartem was developed and put on the market outside the United States years before the PRV legislation was proposed. Continue Reading →

I am in Montreal right now, and missed the Right Rights Coalition demonstration at the Authors Guild. Manon, Judit and Malini from our office are in NYC at the demonstration, and said it was incredibly moving. Several people at the protest sent reports by tweeter. The most complete was probably Abraham Lloyd. This was his account, with the Tweets organized from his first to last.

http://twitter.com/abrahamlloyd

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The Authors Guild is claiming text to speech functions in software programs and e-book readers violate their copyrights, and should be turned off unless they are paid more for the extra functionality. Obviously the geniuses among the Authors Guild are on to something. There are many similar areas of functionality to be exploited by the Authors Guild. Here are some thoughts on how the Guild might squeeze more money from readers, if they want to expand upon their new anti-consumer business strategy:

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The Authors Guild is pressuring Amazon to modify the Kindle 2 so that the synthetic speech function can only be used with the express authorization of the owner of the copyright of a work. A coalition of organizations that represent or work with persons with reading disabilities is organizing a protest to persuade the Guild to change its position. KEI supports the protest, and makes this statement on the Kindle 2 issue:

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