(More on government funded inventions here. Other KEI comments on NIH licenses are found here.) In 2016, the NIH signed a CRADA with NantBioScience, a company lead by Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD. to develop “Further Develop Recombinant NK Cells and Monoclonal Antibodies as… Continue Reading
On 19 July 2017, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced an amendment at the markup in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee of the FY2018 State and Foreign Operations, Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill that would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to use its authority to break patent monopolies for government-funded inventions priced higher in the U.S. than seven other high-income countries.
Attached are the slides I used in today’s FDA hearing on the Hatch-Waxman Act and drug pricing. (link to PDF version of slides) Continue Reading
This afternoon USTR published a summary of the negotiating objectives for NAFTA. A press release is here. The summary report is here.
The intellectual property objectives include this welcome statement, which reflects positions taken in the past by USTR, but it not something we took for granted in the Trump Administration, and we are happy to see it.
Last week, Sanofi sent a letter to six U.S. Senators. (Copies here). We responded today. Our letter is attached here.
Some news reports about the Sanofi letter.
The report of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, S. 1519, published July 10, 2017, includes a directive that links exclusive patent rights to the prices of drugs, vaccines and other medical technologies that are based upon DoD-funded inventions.
The text of the directive, approved unanimously by the full Senate Armed Services Committee, is as follows:
On July 11, 2017, the German Federal Supreme Court announced that it had affirmed the decision of the Federal Patent Court last year to issue a compulsory license allowing Merck to continue selling its HIV drug, raltegravir (marketed as Isentress).
On Thursday afternoon, 6 July 2017, the 26th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), chaired by Ms. Bucura Ionescu (Romania) reached agreement on future work on the following issues: i) Exceptions and Limitations to Patent Rights, ii) Quality of Patents, including Opposition Systems, iii) Patents and Health, iv) Confidentiality of Communications between Clients and Their Patent Advisors and v) Transfer of Technology. Continue Reading
Senator Angus King proposed an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the Department of Defense (DoD) to authorize third parties to use inventions that benefited from DoD research funding, when prices exceed the median price charge in the seven largest economies with per capita incomes at least half the per capita income in the United States.
Today at WIPO, KEI hosted a side event to discuss the ability of countries to deny injunctions in patent infringement cases.