PRIVATE PATENTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH

PRIVATE PATENTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH
2009 Dutch custom officials seize HIV and other medicines upon
the suspicion they were counterfeit. In reality, the products
were legitimate essential medicines, prequalified by the
WHO and approved by the United States Food and Drug
Administration, on their way from India to treatment
programmes in developing countries.
2010 UNITAID establishes the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). The
MPP concludes its first licence agreement with the US
National Institutes for Health.
2012 WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG)
recommends the start of multilateral negotiations on a
medical R&D agreement.
2012 WHO, WIPO and WTO publish a joint report “Promoting
Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation” signalling
greater collaboration between the organisations on public
health issues.
2012 India issues first medicine compulsory licence for liver
cancer drug, sorafenib tosylate (Nexavar).
2012 (October) Treatment advocates establish a patent opposition
database. The database shows a wide variety of legal cases
targeting a number of medicines patents in low- and
middle-income countries.
2013 (April) Indian Supreme Court upholds the rejection of a
patent for Novartis’s cancer drug, Glivec, and section 3(d) of
the Indian Patents Act.
2013 FDA approves sofosbuvir, a new medicine to cure hepatitis
C. The company, Gilead, prices it at US$ 84,000 per treatment
or US$ 1,000 per pill.
2013 WTO adopts decision to exempt LDCs from the obligation
to implement the TRIPS obligations until July 2021 (with
the exception of Articles 3, 4 and 5 related to national
treatment and most-favoured nation treatment), or until
such a date on which they cease to be an LDC member,
whichever date is earlier.
2013 GSK CEO, Andrew Witty, calls US$ 1 billion R&D cost figure,
a frequently cited statistic on what it costs to develop a new
drug, “one of the great myths of the industry.”
2014 Gilead announces voluntary licences with 11 Indian generic
companies for hepatitis C medicines, but excludes countries
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