Tag: Intellectual Property

international connections concept art.

The Prospects for an IP Waiver Under the TRIPS Agreement

Timo Minssen Leave a comment

By Duncan Matthews and Timo Minssen

The informal meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council today, July 6, 2021, focuses international attention once more on prospects for a waiver of the TRIPS Agreement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regardless of whether an actual TRIPS waiver ultimately comes to pass, the real significance of these efforts lies in the increased focus they have placed on the role of IP and trade secrets in improving access and affordability, and scaling-up of manufacturing and supply of vaccines and other health-related technologies. These conversations have introduced the possibility of a rethinking of the relationship between IP, innovation, conservation, and access.

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Traditional countryside scene in the Netherlands with windbreak lane of poplar trees in the wind under summer sky. Ens, Flevoland Province, the Netherlands.

Q&A with Mason Marks on New Psychedelics Law and Regulation Initiative

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

On June 30th, the Petrie-Flom Center announced the launch of a three-year research initiative, the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR), which is supported by a generous grant from the Saisei Foundation.

The Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School will advance evidence-based psychedelics law and policy.

In 2017, the FDA designated MDMA a breakthrough therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, and in 2018 the agency recognized psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression. These designations indicate that psychedelics may represent substantial improvements over existing treatments for mental health conditions. Many other psychedelics, including ibogaine, ketamine, and dimethyltryptamine, are the focus of ongoing psychiatric research and commercialization efforts.

Despite the proliferation of clinical research centers and increasing private investment in psychedelic drug development, there is a relative lack of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of psychedelics research, commerce, and therapeutics.

In the following interview, which has been edited and condensed, Senior Fellow and POPLAR Project Lead Mason Marks explains how POPLAR will fill this gap, and previews some of the initiative’s topics of inquiry.

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Photo of person with gloved hand holding flask at lab bench.

US Support for a WTO Waiver of COVID-19 Intellectual Property – What Does it Mean?

Jorge Contreras Leave a comment

By Jorge L. Contreras

On May 5, 2021, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that the U.S. would support a “waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic” currently being discussed at the World Trade Organization (WTO). This announcement, representing a reversal of longstanding U.S. policy toward intellectual property, came as a welcome surprise to much of the world, but elicited strong negative responses from the pharmaceutical industry as stock prices of leading vaccine producers sank.

In the short time since the announcement was made, there has been a fair amount of speculation, hyperbole, and misinformation on the topic. In this post, I offer an explanation of what just happened, and my guess as to what its likely effects will be, bearing in mind that the situation is fast-moving and somewhat unpredictable.

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Syringe being filled from a vial. Vaccine concept illustration.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver: The Wrong Tool for the Right Goal

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Ana Santos Rutschman and Julia Barnes-Weise

As the toll of COVID-19 continues to increase in many countries in the Global South, there has been a renewed push to address the problem of vaccine scarcity through a waiver of patent rights. Calls for waivers have been recurring throughout the pandemic, from formal proposals introduced in 2020 by some of the larger developing economies (India and South Africa), to op-eds in mainstream media, and editorials in scientific publications, such as Nature. This push gained momentum in early May 2021, just before the meeting of the World Trade Organization’s General Council.

Waiver proposals have attracted the support of prominent names in public health. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, endorsed patent waivers as a tool to address the current vaccine scarcity problem in an article titled Waive Covid Vaccine Patents to Put World on “War Footing.” Others — including, most recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci — have been critical of waiver proposals.

In this piece, we explain the mechanics of patent waivers and argue that waivers alone are the wrong policy tool in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We agree with supporters of the waivers in their ultimate goal — that of scaling up the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines, and then distributing them according to more equitable models than the ones adopted thus far. However, we doubt that the particular types of goods at stake here can be easily replicated and produced in substantially larger quantities simply through a waiver of intellectual property rights.

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Vial and syringe.

4 Things to Know About Intellectual Property, Patent Pledges, and COVID-19 Vaccines

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

High-profile commentators have argued recently that vaccine scarcity needn’t exist. If vaccine manufacturers simply shared their patents with other pharmaceutical companies, supply would quickly ramp up. 

Others have pointed out that numerous bottlenecks exist in the manufacturing process, from the glass vials that hold the vaccine, to the lipids that encase the vaccine’s active ingredient, mRNA.

And even if these bottlenecks didn’t exist, the intellectual property argument may be a straw man.    

In fact, this past October, Moderna made a gesture toward opening access to its intellectual property, by pledging that it would not enforce its patents against “those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.” That month, Jorge L. Contreras, a Presidential Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Utah, covered the patent pledge and its potential implications for Bill of Health.

We checked in with Contreras to ask about the implications of Moderna’s patent pledge now that its vaccine has been proven safe and effective. Here are the highlights from the conversation:

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Photo of person with gloved hand holding flask at lab bench.

Pharmaceutical Patents on Manufacturing Methods: Groundless or Well-Supported?

Laura Karas Leave a comment

By Laura Karas

Are manufacturing method patents — patents not on a pharmaceutical drug itself, but on a method of production of a drug — warranted intellectual property protections, or groundless obstacles to competition?

Patents protect and reward innovation by permitting the patent-holder the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention for a twenty-year period. Pharmaceutical companies have attracted scrutiny, criticism, and legal challenges for amassing large numbers of patents on pharmaceutical drugs, especially high-priced and high revenue-earning drugs.

Here I explore the topic of pharmaceutical patents on methods of production and translate into layman’s terms some thought-provoking recent scholarship by innovation scholars W. Nicholson Price and Arti Rai.

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close up photo of U.S. currency.

When “Pay-for-Delay” Becomes “Delay-Without-Pay”: Humira Antitrust Claims

Laura Karas Leave a comment

By Laura Karas

In June 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed state and federal antitrust claims against AbbVie, maker of Humira (adalimumab), for accruing more than 130 patents on the top-selling drug and asserting allegedly unmeritorious patent infringement claims against makers of adalimumab biosimilars. AbbVie then settled the patent infringement litigation by entering into agreements with eight drug makers to allow adalimumab biosimilars to enter the U.S. market in 2023 and the European market in 2018.

In my last post, I discussed the district court’s memorandum opinion finding that “the vast majority” of AbbVie’s conduct was not “objectively baseless petitioning” and was therefore immunized under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. In this post, I explore several problematic aspects of the court’s reasoning for rejecting the claims of pay-for-delay and market allocation.

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Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

Clash of Titans? A Brewing Dispute between Telehealth Giants

Vrushab Gowda Leave a comment

By Vrushab Gowda

Competition between rival telehealth providers spilled into open conflict last month, as incumbent Teladoc Health, Inc. (Teladoc) filed a patent infringement suit against relative upstart American Well Corporation (Amwell).

This development marks a significant escalation in what has been a lengthy arms race between the two publicly traded entities. Both having witnessed skyrocketing sales in recent months, aided by a shift to virtual care and a host of regulatory flexibilities, although neither has turned a profit to date.

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Vaccine.

Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceuticals in the EU: A Reality Check

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Caranina (Nina) Colpaert

As pharma races to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, researchers and governments are working in parallel to pinpoint strategies to secure its widespread access.

To that end, many countries plan to seek refuge in a long-existing strategy: compulsory licensing.

In the European Union (EU), however, compulsory licensing is not as self-evident as it might seem. This blog post focuses on four specific challenges that come with compulsory licensing in the EU and potential alternative solutions.

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