Letter from Senator Bernie Sanders to the VA, asking for compulsory licenses on Hepatitis C drugs.

Attached is the text of a letter sent by Senator Bernie Sanders to Robert A. McDonald, the Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, asking the Secretary “to use your authority as Secretary of Veterans Affairs to break the patents on Hepatitis C medications for the treatment of veterans suffering with the disease.”

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KEI Comments to DHHS on WHA Agenda 17.5 (Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and IP)

Andy-IMG_3181_600x.pngOn Friday May 8, 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services held a listening session to solicit input on the agenda items for the upcoming 68th World Health Assembly. KEI delivered five interventions covering a range of critical WHA topics. The full provisional agenda of the 68th WHA can be accessed here.

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KEI Comments on DHHS Session on WHA68, agenda item 14.1, regarding collection of economic data

Rajasingh-1-IMG_3157_1024x716.pngOn Friday May 8, 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services held a listening session to solicit input on the agenda items for the upcoming 68th World Health Assembly. KEI delivered five interventions covering a range of critical WHA topics. The full provisional agenda of the 68th WHA can be accessed here:

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2015: Kassy Perry, speaking on behalf of ?, opposing AB 463, on transparency of drug R&D costs and subsidies

During the debate of California bill AB 463, on the Pharmaceutical Cost Transparency Act of 2015, Kassy Perry was using Twitter to attack the bill, posting links to and repeating pharmaceutical industry talking points. Who is Kassy Perry? A founder of Perry Communications, a Sacramento public relations and lobbying firm. This is her Twitter profile:

https://twitter.com/KassyPerry

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Sony referred to “WIPO treaty for blind as “stalking horse” to “denigrate the rights of copyright owners”

In the new Wikileaks archives of leaked Sony documents (Link here), there is a memo (https://wikileaks.org/sony/docs/05/docs/DECE/DECE%20CP1%20-%20ss.doc.pdf), which describes Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) concern over the proposed WIPO treaty for copyright exceptions for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. The memo, undated in the Wikileaks archives, but probably written in 2009, included the following passages:

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Patents with government interests, by disease, 2010 to 2013

The attached PDF file provides counts on the number of patents with various search terms in the specification (spec/”search term”), and the number of those patents that declare either government rights in the patents (govt/government), an assignment to the US government (an/”united states of america”), or both. The complete counts are in the PDF file. The queries were done by Claire Cassedy on December 5, 2014.

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