krista.cox's blog

With pivotal vote today, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines calls on House of Commons to reform Access to Medicines Regine (CAMR)

March 9, 2011

The USPTO recently accepted comments on its revised proposal for its pilot program to incentivize humanitarian technologies.  UAEM had previously commented on the USPTO's initiative in November as did Knowledge Ecology International, Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam America, and Public Citizen.  UAEM, together with the aforementioned civil society organizations, submitted joint comments to t

Bill C-393 is important legislation now before the Parliament of Canada that would strengthen Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) and deliver life-saving medicines to those most in need in developing countries.  If CAMR can be made to work by enacting Bill C-393’s reforms – including the “one-licence solution” – it would be one mechanism helping to address the persistent global inequity in access to health care.

Just before the end of 2010, the United States Supreme Court accepted amicus briefs in Stanford v. Roche.  Notably, former United States Senator and co-author of the Bayh-Dole Act, Birch Bayh submitted an amicus brief. 

December 12, 2010 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Bayh-Dole Act.  Although the Act is the subject of soaring positive rhetoric (i.e., "This legislation changed fundamentally the way America develops technologies from federally funded university research and effectively secured the country's leadership position in innovation."), an in depth look at the effects of Bayh-Dole over the past thirty years illustrates some of the pitfalls of these claims.  

Recently, UAEM filed an amicus curiae brief in the American Molecular Pathology, et. al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office case.  The case, originally heard before the District Court for the Southern District of New York, is now on appeal to the Federal Circuit and many believe it is making its way up to the Supreme Court.  

On November 19, 2010, UAEM responded to the U.S. Department of Commerce's request for comments on a proposed pilot program that would provide priority review vouchers for humanitarian technologies and licensing behavior.  Previously, the USPTO announced its consideration of a new mechanism of granting priority review vouchers to incentivize behavior to address humanitarian needs.  The vouchers would enable patent applicants to obtain accelerated ex-parte re-examination of any patent they own or to place it out on the open market.  

Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its amicus brief in the BRCA gene patenting case.  Although the DOJ filed as a neutral party, favoring neither Myriad nor ACLU's positions, in essence, the brief argued that mere isolation of a gene does not change its status as a project of nature and is therefore not patent eligible.

After an excellent first day at Duke, Day 2 at UNC kicked off with a look at UAEM and the American Medical Student Association's (AMSA) biologics campaign and the problems created by data exclusivity.  Chris Manz, chair of the AMSA PharmFree campaign, noted that generic drugs have saved $734 billion in the United States over the last decade but data exclusivity protects the original patent grantee.

The Solicitor General has now filed a brief in the Stanford v. Roche case previously blogged about here.  Briefly, Stanford sued Roche for patent infringement over technology developed by Mark Holodniy, a Stanford researcher who also worked for Cetus (a company acquired by Roche).  The Federal Circuit previously ruled in favor of Roche, holding that Stanford had no standing to challenge the patents and had no ownership interest in the case.