2016: Objection to exclusive license to AestasRx Inc.

(More on government funded inventions here. Other KEI comments on NIH licenses are found here.) Susan Ano, Ph.D., NINDS Technology Transfer, 31 Center Drive, Suite 8A52, MSC2540 Bethesda, MD 20892; Telephone: (301) 435-5515; anos@mail.nih.gov Dear Dr. Ano, I am writing to express… Continue Reading

2016: Midissia Therapeutics license of NIH owned breast and prostate cancer vaccine patents

(More on government funded inventions here. Other KEI comments on NIH licenses are found here.) Sabarni K. Chatterjee, Ph.D., M.B.A. Senior Licensing and Patenting Manager, NCI Technology Transfer Center, 9609 Medical Center Drive, RM 1E530 MSC 9702, Bethesda, MD 20892-9702… Continue Reading

Xtandi 2016 March-In Request

Today Knowledge Ecology International and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health, asking that they exercise either their royalty-free, non-exclusive license or federal “march-in” rights to end the monopoly on an expensive prostate cancer drug, enzalutamide, marketed as Xtandi by Astellas, a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

Xtandi was invented at UCLA on federal grants from the NIH and DoD.

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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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Birch Bayh’s competing interests and evolving views

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act is named after two former US Senators, Birch Bayh and Bob Dole. In 2002 both claimed the Bayh-Dole Act march-in provisions were not intended to address cases where prices for inventions are unreasonable, and Senator Bayh repeated this view during a 2004 march-in case involving Abbott patents on ritonavir.

Among the provisions of the Act that suggest otherwise are the following:

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