[Ip-health] CPTech Brown Bag Lunch in D.C. with Kevin Outterson

[Benjamin Krohmal]

The Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) is hosting a seminar by
Kevin Outterson on "Patent Buy-Outs for Global Disease Innovation."

Many of you received the initial invitation when this event was
scheduled for May 10th and then cancelled.  It has now been rescheduled:

Date: Tuesday October 10, 2006
Time: 12:30-2pm
Venue: 1621 Connecticut Avenue Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009

Kevin Outterson is an Associate Professor of Law at West Virginia
University. He is also a member of the American Health Lawyer's
Association's FDA Task Force. In 2004, Governor Wise appointed him to a
4 year term with the West Virginia Pharmaceutical Cost Management
Council. Some of his professional papers include, "Patent Buy-Outs for
Global Disease Innovations for low and middle-income countries" and
"Fair followers: Expanding access to generic pharmaceuticals for
low-income populations."

Professor Outterson's presentation will discuss the concept of patent
buy-outs to facilitate generic competition.


	Some 80% to 90% of the global sales of patented pharmaceuticals
occur in the
30 wealthy countries which are members of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), roughly similar to the World Bank's
definition of 29 high-income countries. Pharmaceutical markets for
patented products largely follow the money.
	The mismatch between global pharmaceutical markets and global
disease burdens
leads to an interesting opportunity. Patented pharmaceuticals could
be offered to
more than 84% of the world's population at generic prices. (Only
high-income country patients would bear pharmaceutical patent rents).
The gain in health from increasingly affordable pharmaceuticals would be
considerable. The primary disadvantage of this plan would be a quite
small reduction in global R&D cost recovery; but even this small deficit
could be restored to the companies through a carefully designed patent
buy-out mechanism.


Other upcoming brown bags:

October 17th - Thomas Pogge will be presenting a different proposal
for increasing access to pharmaceuticals in his presentation "Social
Justice and New Approaches to Promoting
Pharmaceutical Innovation."

If you would like to join us for Kevin Outterson's brown bag seminar
or for Thomas Pogge's seminar, please RSVP your name, title,
organization and contact details to: ben.krohmal@cptech.org or
202.332.2670

Benjamin Krohmal
Research Associate
Consumer Project on Technology
Tel: +1-202-332-2670 ex. 14
Fax: +1-202-332-2673
ben.krohmal@cptech.org