Attached is a letter, dated October 14, 2015, from Senator Sherrod Brown to USTR’s Ambassador Michael Froman, urging USTR to support a permanent waiver of WTO drug patent rules, for Least Developed Countries. Negotiations on this issue begin formally on October 15, 2015, during a meeting of the WTO TRIPS Council.
Among the money quotes:
This is a copy of recommendations for an Indian National IPR Policy, written by the “IP Think Tank,” which was constituted by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion(DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. A copy scanned from a hard copy is here.
The members of the IPR Think Tank were:
The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) General Assembly is currently engaged five separate informal consultations on the following topics: 1) Lisbon Union, 2) the future of the Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, 3) the work program of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), 4) the Design Law Treaty and 5) WIPO External Offices.
The WTO TRIPS Council meets from Thursday, 15 October 2015 to Friday, 16 October 2015. The hot topics for consideration include agenda item 13 (Request from the LDC Group for an indefinite exemption from WTO IP obligations to provide patents for pharmaceutical products, agenda item 8 (non-violation and situation complaints), agenda item 7 (Review of the Paragraph 6 system) and agenda item 14 (a discussion item co-sponsored by Australia, the European Union and the United States on “Intellectual Property and Innovation: Entrepreneurialism and New Technologies).
US, AU and CA try to block WTO LDC drug patent waiver because PhRMA’s not happy enough with the TPP
Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meet this week in Geneva (15 October 2015 – 16 October 2015) to decide if the poorest countries on earth are exempt from WTO rules for pharmaceutical patents. The WTO’s TRIPS Council is expected to make a decision in respect of the request of the LDC Group’s request for indefinite exemption from TRIPS obligations on pharmaceutical patents. Continue Reading
Video: Coalition for Affordable T-DM1 Crown Use Request (in UK, for patents on cancer drug Kadcyla)
This is a video explaining the request by the Coalition for Affordable T-DM1 to use the Crown Use provisions in the UK patents law, in order to grant compulsory licences on the patents relating to the cancer drug T-DM1, marketed by Roche under the brand name Kadcyla. The video was produced and edited by Zack Struver for KEI, and features narration by Merith Basey from UAEM.
Commentary on TPP IP Chapter Leak
Press Releases and Articles about the IP Chapter of the TPP
Leaked text can be found here.
Some KEI Tweets regarding TPP IP Chapter
On 9 October 2015, Wikileaks released the final text of the IP chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Jamie Love provided comments via twitter.
https://twitter.com/jamie_love
Updated: 9 October 2015
(In the order posted)
- Wikileaks has the October 5, 2015 version of the #TPP IP Chapter. https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter-051015.pdf
WIPO General Assembly 2015: Statement of United States on Broadcasting Treaty and Copyright Limitations and Exceptions
On Wednesday, 7 October 2015, the United States of America delivered the following statement on agenda item 12 (Report on the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights). The US expressed support for a broadcasting treaty under a signal-based approach, focused on “unauthorized simultaneous or near-simultaneous retransmission of broadcast signals to the public over any type of platform, including the Internet.”
On copyright limitations and exceptions, the US expressed support for
FDA enforcement discretion to allow unregistered generic Daraprim to be imported and sold at lower prices
In 2011, the FDA told the NIH it could use enforcement discretion to permit importation and sale of unregistered drugs
In 2011, in the context of a shortage of Fabrazyme, the FDA told the NIH if they could “in theory” allow Shire to import and sell Replagal, a drug approved for sale in Europe, but not in the United States, as an unregistered biologic substitute. The remedy explored for the Fabrazyme shortage may be the best way to address a different problem, the price gouging associated with the drug Daraprim (generic name: pyrimethamine).