SCCR 29 December 9, 2014: 3 secret broadcasting treaty charts ?

Posted on by Manon Ress

The December 9, 2014 SCCR morning session started with the Chair’s summary of yesterday informals. The delegates discussed 3 charts. The first chart called “a technological platforms chart” is supposed to clarify the scope of protection of the new instrument, the broadcasters’ treaty. The second chart is called “a rights chart”. And additionally, the Chair prepared a third chart which was called a definitions chart, which contained the definitions of broadcasting organization, broadcasting transmission and signal. Continue Reading →

SCCR 29 Morning Session: Is the Broadcasting Treaty crawling back?

Posted on by Manon Ress

The morning session of SCCR 29 (Dec 8-12, 2014) ended with a coffee break which will be followed by informals (that we are not allowed to report on at this point). After the usual decisions this morning i.e, Adoption of the agenda of the twenty ninth session then Accreditation of new non governmental organizations (and yes, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) is in!) we had the Adoption of the Report of the Twenty-Eighth Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. Continue Reading →

Patents with government interests, by disease, 2010 to 2013

Posted on by KEI Staff

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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Save the Date – 10 December 2014: The Broadcasting Treaty: A Solution in Search of a Problem?

Posted on by Thiru

On Wednesday, 10 December 2014, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) will convene a side event entitled, “The Broadcasting Treaty: A Solution in Search of a Problem?”; the event will take place in Room B of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from 13:30 to 15:00. Continue Reading →

NIH rulemaking on transparency of clinical trials

Posted on by James Love

The NIH has a notice about a proposed rule that “clarifies and expands requirements for the submission of clinical trial registration and results information to the ClinicalTrials.gov database.” Comments are due on or before February 19, 2015. We may ask the NIH to consider expanding the trials registry to include more information on the economics of clinical trials.

Here is a link to the Regulations.Gov docket for the proposed rule:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NIH-2011-0003-0003 Continue Reading →

UACT sends letter to Tufts President, Chairman of Trustees, asking questions about R&D cost study

Posted on by James Love

On November 24, 2014. the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) sent a letter to Anthony P. Monaco, Office of the President, Tufts University, with copies to Michael Baenen, the Tufts Chief of Staff, and Peter Dolan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Tufts University, regarding the Tufts University press conference to announce an estimate of $2.6 billion as the R&D costs for new drugs. Continue Reading →

The Winning Bet

Posted on by Elizabeth Rajasingh

Leading up to the release of Professor Joe DiMasi’s latest study of the cost of drug development, KEI offered $50 to the individual who could most accurately predict the new cost for drug R&D.

We received 26 guesses, ranging from $1.157 billion to $5 billion.

Joel Lexchin’s estimate ($2.47 billion) was the closest to DiMasi’s number ($2.558 billion). It was also the 5th largest estimate.

A complete list of submissions is below.

Name & Guess
Charles Clift – 1.157 billion
Nicole H – 1.2 billion
Ronald Rader – 1.55 billion
Wouter Deelder – 1.655 billion
Continue Reading →