By Emily Michiko Morris & Douglas Park
The high cost of some pharmaceuticals is a complex issue, but the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) most recent criticism of pharmaceutical patents’ role is misguided. The FTC has criticized the listing of drug product device patents in the FDA’s “Orange Book,” a listing of patents related to various FDA-approved drug products. Read more
By Emily Michiko Morris and Joshua Kresh
Executive summary: Many critics of pharmaceutical companies argue that they abuse the patent system through “evergreening” or “thickets” to increase the amount of time they can avoid generic competition and keep drug prices high. Read more
By Jack Ring
In their forthcoming paper, Solutions Still Searching for a Problem: A Call for Relevant Data to Support “Evergreening” Allegations,[1] C-IP2 Senior Scholars Erika Lietzan of Mizzou Law and Kristina Acri of Colorado College call for relevant data to support evergreening allegations and accompanying policy proposals. Read more
C-IP2’s original post on the UC Hastings’ Evergreen Drug Patent Search Database can be read here.
Robin Feldman
Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law
Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair
Director of the Center for Innovation at University of California Hastings
We would like to thank the author of the blog post for taking the time to look at our work for the Evergreen Drug Patent Database. Read more
The following post comes from Colin Kreutzer, a 2E at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at C-IP2.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the role of intellectual property in modern medicine and on the complex social questions surrounding a system that grants exclusive rights over life-or-death products. Read more
CPIP has published a new policy brief celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Diamond v. Chakrabarty decision, where the Supreme Court in 1980 held that a genetically modified bacteria was patentable subject matter. The brief, entitled Forty Years Since Diamond v. Read more
The following post comes from Colin Kreutzer, a rising 2E at Scalia Law and a Research Assistant at CPIP.
By Colin Kreutzer
It’s been forty years since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of patentability for a GE scientist and the oil-eating bacterium he’d created, greatly expanding the scope of living matter that was eligible to be patented. Read more
In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held, in a direct purchaser antitrust action, that an innovative pharmaceutical company marketing an injectable drug product had “improperly listed” in FDA’s Orange Book a patent claiming a mechanism used in the drug’s delivery device. Read more
By Kevin Madigan & Sean O’Connor
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee was to mark up a bill limiting patent eligibility for combination drug patents—new forms, uses, and administrations of FDA approved medicines. While the impetus was to curb so-called “evergreening” of drug patents, the effect would have been to stifle life-saving therapeutic innovations. Read more
Last month, global health initiative UNITAID launched an appeal for suggestions on breaking down barriers that frustrate the progress of public health. UNITAID is a multilateral partnership hosted by the World Health Organization whose mission is to develop systematic approaches to identifying challenges in the treatment of devastating diseases such as HIV, TB, and malaria. Read more
