Essential Medicines News

“Microbicide Developer Receives License for Novel HIV Microbicide Candidate from Merch & Co., Inc.,” International Partnership for Microbicides Press Release, 11 March 2008.
Merck has agreed to provide a full royalty-free license for L’644, a gp41 fusion inhibitor, to the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) for development as a potential vaginal microbicide for women in […]

Nicholas Zamiska, “Thai Ministry to Recommend Ignoring Patents on Cancer Drugs,” Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2008.
Nopporn Wong-Anan, “Thailand Will Override Cancer Drug Patents,” Reuters, 10 March 2008.
Thailand’s health minister, Chaiya Sasomsap, is urging the government to continue issuing compulsory licenses, in particular for drugs to treat cancer. As such, Novartis has agreed […]

Erika Check, “The Treasure of Mumbai,” Wired. December 2006.
Cipla is an Indian pharmaceutical company that took advantage of past Indian drug patent laws that made patents apply not to the chemical compounds themselves but to the processes used to manufacture them. In India, Cipla was able to sell its own version of other company’s drugs […]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a company could sue to challenge the validity of a patent at the same time it licensed that patent. The ruling in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. overturns the decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which had upheld the decision of a lower court […]

James Love, “The high prices we pay for government funded inventions,” Huffington Post, 9 January 2007.
“Re: Federal Procurement of Patented Drugs under Statutory Licenses,” letter to Office of Management and Budget, Essential Inventions, 5 January 2007.
In the United States, the Bayh-Dole Act allowed recipients of federal government research grants to retain intellectual property rights on […]

Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, “Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation,” Los Angeles Times, 7 January 2007.
A Times investigation reveals the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable endowment and a major donor on global health issues, has billions of dollars of investments in unsavory companies. These companies, according to the piece, […]

“Undermining TRIPS: protectionism at its worst,” editorial, The Lancet, 369: 9555, p. 2, 6 January 2007. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60003-8. (Registration required.)
The editorial discusses Novartis’ suit against the Indian government, challenging Indian patent law, and the U.S. pressure on Thailand not to grant a compulsory license for the AIDS drug efavirenz.
Two international campaigns are currently defending the […]

Peter Kelley, “Choosing the greater good in promotion of UW intellectual properties,” University Week: University of Washington faculty and staff newspaper, 24: 11, 4 January 2007.
An advisory committee at the University of Washington has recommended that inventions developed at the university, including medicine, be licensed “to maximize the worldwide use and societal benefit” of the […]

Follow-up to Fighting hepatitis C with “ethical pharmaceuticals”
Sarah Boseley, “Big pharma’s bad karma,” commentary, Comment is Free: The Guardian blog, 2 January 2007.
Patents, argue the drug giants, are their lifeblood. They have to keep the prices of their drugs high as long as possible - at least in the rich countries - in order to […]

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, “Drug costs imperil Brazil AIDS fight,” Boston Globe, 3 January 2007.
Brazil, the first developing country to guarantee free AIDS treatment to anyone who needs it, has faced a steep increase in recent costs. In two years, the country’s spending on AIDS drugs has increased 75 percent.
AIDS activists say that ballooning drug prices […]