While the number of patented medicines on the EML has increased in recent editions, the portion of the list currently under patent remains a small portion of all drugs on the EML, currently about 10%. A deeper dive into the data shows that many drugs are only patented in a fraction of lower income countries. Thus, 80% of lower income countries have 50 or fewer active patent filings on that ten percent. Moreover, many of these patented drugs are subject to institutionalized programs to provide access at lower cost. This paper provides an update to previous efforts to understand the nature of the EML, while expanding previous information thanks in part to the existence of new freely accessible online databases showing patent status and participation in programs to provide access.
Patents
The rise and fall of the first American patent thicket: The sewing machine war of the 1850s
The patent war of the 1850s may have been a long time ago, but it is still relevant. Adam Mossoff shows how the invention and incredible commercial success of the sewing machine is a powerful display of early American technological, commercial and legal ingenuity that heralds important empirical lessons for understanding and applying patent thievery theory today.
The Sewing Machine War demonstrated all these phenomena, including the effects of patent trolls, and proves that this is an age-old problem in patent law. The untangling of this patent thicket in the sewing machine combination of 1856, led to the first privately established patent pool. This also challenges the conventional wisdom that patent thickets are best resolved by public law rules limiting ownership of patents.
Patent grants up 5.9% at IP5 offices in 2019
Patents played an even more important role in 2019 to protect intellectual property. According to the latest IP5 Statistics Report, the world’s five largest IP offices granted 1.6 million patents in 2019, an increase of 5.9% on the previous year. The total number includes 2.7 million patent applications filed at the IP5 offices in 2019.
The annual patent statistics published by the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the China National Intellectual Property Administration and the United States Patent and Trademark Office were used for this analysis. If you are curious about the 2020 EPO statistics – they will be published in March.
ISO standards diluted by WiFi negative LOAs
This article discusses a partnership between IEEE and ISO to fast-track some IEEE standards through ISO. Certain IEEE standards relating to Wi-Fi technologies are getting fast-tracked even though they have not gotten positive Letters of Assurance, despite this being a necessary prerequisite for ISO approval.
Webinar: Ensuring leadership on 5G
Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond, this webinar explores the future of technological leadership, with a focus on 5G and other emerging technologies. Panelists discuss the roles that business and government will play in building the next generation of technologies.
Topics include:
- What is 5G?
- 5g use cases: examples from the U.S. and Germany
- Challenges to using 5G
- How we can engender innovation related to 5G
Webinar: Promoting Diversity in U.S. Innovation
When the American patent system becomes more diverse, America’s innovation economy becomes stronger and more successful. Inventors who hold patents consistently earn higher incomes than non-inventors, and businesses with patents—especially small businesses and startups owned by women and people of color—are better able to access capital, attract customers and licensees, and create jobs than businesses without IP. Inventors, academics, industry leaders, advocacy leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders must work together to close the patent gaps for women, people of color, and low-income individuals to help close wage and wealth gaps, strengthen the U.S. economy, and develop new and different inventions. This webinar discusses how policymakers, educators, and the private sector are working to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to invent and patent.
Collaborations to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution
The need for the rapid development and global distribution of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection has spurred a number of novel collaborations between the pharmaceutical companies, research entities, and other stakeholders. These collaborations aim to ensure broad access to new health technologies to address the pandemic.
- One example is the University of Oxford Jenner Institute vaccine candidate, developed with AstraZeneca, that included collaborations with Catalent Biologics (Italy), Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services (UK), Oxford Biomedica (UK), Emergent BioSolutions, BioKangtai (China), and R-Pharm (Russia). Through the WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, AstraZeneca signed an agreement with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, on vaccine development, manufacturing, and procurement, ensuring 300 million doses of the vaccine for low- and middle-income countries. Separately, AstraZeneca also signed a license agreement with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to supply 1 billion doses of vaccine to low- and middle-income countries.
- Another example involves Sanofi and GSK, which signed a Statement of Intent with Gavi, to make available 200 million doses of their adjuvanted recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, if approved by regulatory authorities.
- A third example focuses on Johnson & Johnson. The company has committed to bringing an affordable vaccine to the public on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use and anticipates the first batches of a COVID-19 vaccine to be available for emergency use authorization in early 2021.
Singapore approves a lab-grown meat product
Singapore’s Food Agency has approved for sale a lab-grown meat product, a global first. Read more.
Analysis of patent “evergreening”
In this article, Professor Erika Leitzen argues that critics of so-called “evergreening” of healthcare patents have an ulterior motive: to deny drug innovators the right to enjoy the exclusivity, and the resulting pricing advantages, their patents afford them. She says understanding this requires unpacking the regulatory landscape and market more carefully, and paying closer attention to word choice.