Pharmaceutical News 2.0

Carl Weissman 5/29/09

Tell me if this makes sense to you:

—If I buy a diamond, I can own it for as long as I like;

—If I produce a brand name for a product, provided that I trademark it, I can own it for as long as I would like, until and unless it becomes “generic” (like the term “escalator”, which actually started as a brand name);

—If I write a novel, provided that I copyright protect it, I can own it until I die, and my heirs can maintain those rights for 70 years longer; but,

—If I invent a drug, even if I protect that intellectual property to the full extent of U.S. patent law, I can only own it for 20 years from the date I file for a patent on it.

I can own a tangible good forever, I can own a trademark virtually forever, I can own a copyright for my entire life plus 70 years. But property which is more intrinsically a part of me – my idea, my invention, the product of my intellect – I am only allowed to own that for 20 years after I reveal it to the patent office.

Rationally, it seems obvious that all property – whether tangible or intellectual – should be subject to the same rules and laws of ownership. If you can own a gemstone forever, you should be able to own an invention forever. In fact, if a society wishes to impose differential standards for ownership rights to different types of property, wouldn’t it make more sense that preferential treatment be given to those items which are the product of your talent, your creativity, your self, over those things which you earn or purchase based upon that product of your efforts? The logical extension of this argument, in any free society, is that you should be able to own all property, whether purchased or invented, physical or ethereal, for as long as you wish. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, title – all should be perpetual.

Read the rest of this article on drug patent laws here.

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Reuters
(Excerpt)
Tuesday, December 26, 2006; 2:36 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday affirmed the validity of a patent on Eli Lilly and Co.’s (LLY.N) top-selling schizophrenia drug Zyprexa, upholding a 2005 ruling by a federal judge.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it had found no reversible error in the April 2005 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Young, which handed Eli Lilly a major victory in its efforts to fend off generic competition.

The patent at issue in the case runs through April of 2011 and had been contested by Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA.TA)(TEVA.O) and Indian drugmaker Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (REDY.BO)(RDY.N).

Representatives for Teva and Dr. Reddy’s could not immediately reached for comment.

In 2005, Zyprexa made up 29 percent of Eli Lilly’s $2.6 billion sales. Shares of the drugmaker were up 1.2 percent to $51.96 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Eli Lilly said the appeals court ruling was a victory for all brand name drug makers.

Read more about Eli Lilly’s drug patent.

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By Roger Bate
May 17, 2004

As the world’s health experts gather in Geneva today for the World Health Assembly, it is time to assess the main AIDS debate that has raged for all of this decade. Without clarity on the problems of the spread of HIV AIDS there can be no hope of a solution.

Amir Attaran, a fellow with the Royal Institute of International Affairs (and a board member of my own organization, Africa Fighting Malaria), has for the past four years done his best to provide light to an otherwise heated debate. Specifically, he has exposed the various fallacies of anti-globalization public-health activists who attempt to undermine the patent system for the sake of manufacturing and exporting generic drugs. He has also done his best to expose the hyper-sensitivities of the pharmaceutical industry. His recent analysis of drug-patent exploitation in developing countries, published in the May-June issue of Health Affairs, does both. In it Attaran points out that patents have rarely been a problem for drug consumers in poor nations; in fact, only 1.4 percent of the WHO essential-drug list is on patent in the poorest 65 countries. Because of this fact, Attaran concludes that “poverty, not patents, imposes the greater limitation on access.” At the same time, he also points out that the patent system is not as likely to be undermined as pharmaceutical companies might believe or imply.

Dr. Attaran’s argument should squash once and for all demands for compulsory licensing of patented medicines in most poor countries. (Compulsory licensing is a legal procedure that allows the overriding of patent rights so that generic medicines can be produced and sold in countries that lack the capacity to manufacture them themselves.) His analysis should also make largely irrelevant the Doha declaration, made at the World Trade Organisation Ministerial meeting in November 2001, which established the notion that the poorest countries should, in principle, be able to import drugs from generics companies in countries that do not (albeit legally) respect the drug patents of Western companies.

The key difficulty in passing this declaration was agreeing on what should constitute the poorest countries and which diseases should be covered. There was widespread disagreement as to whether ‘poor’ should include just the poorest countries (known collectively in U.N.-speak as less developed), or should be expanded to include all countries except the non-OECD members. The U.S. and most European nations wanted just the poorest nations included. But the U.S. was isolated on the disease scope. Most countries did not want the list of diseases covered to be restricted to the ‘Global Fund’ diseases of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria; the U.S. alone pushed hard to confine the list to this group.

Read more drug patent facts.

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