For Immediate Release
3 November 2015
Contact: Zack Struver, +1 (202) 332-2670 or zack.struver@keionline.org
Geneva — The World Trade Organization is poised to announce this Friday its approval of a limited 17-year extension of a 2001 waiver of obligations in the TRIPS Agreement, set to expire at the end of this year, the terms of which exempt Least Developed Countries (LDCs) from requirements to grant patents or related intellectual property rights on pharmaceutical products.
On October 23, 2015, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health hosted a forum titled “Drug Pricing: Public Health Implications,” that was moderated by Caroline Humer, a Reuters healthcare correspondent. The forum featured a panel of four individuals who work on drug pricing:
Steven Pearson, President of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School
The concept of delinkage refers to an model of incentivizing innovation in pharmaceutical research and development wherein the price of a medical technology is not linked to the cost of R&D. The application of delinkage in the medical technologies market has been gaining broad based support from NGOs, IGOs, and governments. Below are a selection of public statements, resolutions, bills, and papers that call for the need for delinkage in ensuring global access to medicines.
I was recently asked by OSF to write a two page document that described “what was wrong with the current system of funding R&D?” and to offer some “important ideas for change.” This was my two page submission.
What is wrong with the current system for funding R&D? What are the most important ideas for change?
(In two pages, for OSF meeting on drug development)
James Love
October 20, 2015
1. What is wrong with the current system for funding R&D?
On Tuesday October 20, 2015, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), one of the principal authors of the Biologic Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative requesting timely clarification regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s impact “on existing U.S. laws that limit damages for infringement of intellectual property (IP) rights, and on the potential ISDS ramifications for those conflicts.”
On the left, the people in the Obama Administration trying to block a permanent waiver of WTO drug patent obligations for Least Developed Countries (as defined by the UN). On the right, some people living in least developed countries.
Ambassador Michael Forman. Head of USTR. Alma maters: Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law. Formerly ran a hedge fund for Citibank. Continue Reading →
Below you will find a collection of articles in the press and commentary by KEI relating to the request for LDC patent exemption on pharmaceutical products at the WTO.
Press Release: Coalition for Affordable T-DM1 Asks the UK Government to Employ Crown Use Authority to Lower Price of Expensive Cancer Drug sold by Roche
