By James Love
This is a story about U.S. patent number 6,958,335, and how it took more than 18 years for Novartis to acknowledge National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in a key patent for Gleevec, allowing Novartis to shape the narrative regarding its role in the development of Gleevec, and also to avoid demands that Novartis make the invention “available to the public on reasonable terms,” which is an obligation under the Bayh-Dole Act.
On May 10, 2001, the United States FDA approved a new drug, imatinib, initially for the treatment of a rare indication: chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The drug was registered by Novartis, which sold the drug under the brand name Gleevec in the United States and several other markets, and as Glivec in others.