[Ip-health] UNITAID Patent Pool at Mexico City AIDS Conference

[James Love]

http://www.keionline.org/index.php?option=3Dcom_jd-wp&Itemid=3D39&p=3D135

UNITAID Patent Pool at Mexico City AIDS Conference
August 6th, 2008 by James Love

I have been planning to write a longer note about the Mexico City
briefing on the UNITAID Patent Pool, but until I finish that, here are a
few details. The meeting was surprisingly well attended, particularly
given the time slot and lack of official advertising. Almost everyone
who attended stayed until the end

The basic message from UNITAID Secretariat and Board, and the experts
working on the proposal was as follows:

    * the pool would be created as a voluntary mechanism,
    * patent owners would be given the opportunity to identify the field
of use for licensed patents.
    * The default geographic scope was all countries not defined at high
income by the World Bank, but patent owners would be allowed to provide
a negative list of countries the license did not apply to.

In the context of AIDS, the pool was presented as an important
initiative to address the need for sustainable access to second
generation treatments. Most treatment in Africa and in many developing
countries today use a very inexpensive 3TC/d4T/NVP regime. This will
have to be replaced by newer, more expensive medicines. The interest in
the pool was a sign of growing recognition among donors and public
health experts that long term treatment cannot be supplied without major
changes in access to the newer medicines.

All of the panel members did a great job presenting the initiative, but
perhaps the most anticipated presentation was by Gregg Alton, the
General Counsel and Senior VP of Gilead.

Gregg Alton said that Gilead was definitely willing to consider
licensing patents to the pool, depending of course upon the nature of
the license terms. Alton then rattled off a number of potential benefits
to Gilead. In addition to making it easier for firms to develop fixed
dose combinations and pediatric formulations, the UNITAID Patent Pool
could help API manufacturers with better forecasting of demand. The
UNITAID Patent Pool could enter into agreements with countries that
benefited from the pool, requiring streamlined drug registration,
recognizing, for example, WHO/USFDA or other pre-qualification programs.
He said that if non-profit entities (Governments, Universities, Research
Institutes or Foundations) licensed patents to the pool, it would be
easier for companies to develop new drugs. Alton said that among the
many challenges for the pool would be to make it attractive for patent
owners to license to middle income countries. Alton said that additional
incentives, such as prize funds that were linked to licensing patents to
the pool, would make the pool more attractive, noting also that this
might be particularly useful for products like TB, where the markets in
the U.S. or Europe were relatively small.

After the presentations by the five member panel, Merck took the floor
and said that it was willing to discuss licensing patents to the UNITAID
Patent Pool, and Merck was open to =E2=80=9Cnew thinking=E2=80=9D about way=
s of
expanding access in developing countries. Tibotec also spoke, and also
said it found the Patent Pool an interesting initiative, and they would
consider licensing patents to the pool. Tibotec, like Gilead, emphasized
the importance of considering incentives to companies that licensed
patents to the pool.

Abbott spoke, not to criticize the pool itself, but largely to highlight
Abbott=E2=80=99s concern about the scope of diseases that would be covered.
Abbott said it was surprised to hear talk about TB and other diseases,
as opposed to a narrower focus on areas like pediatric AIDS medicines.

UNITAID board members from Brazil and Norway spoke at the event, giving
strong support for the project.

A number of NGOs spoke at the event, including endorsements from MSF,
Paris Act Up, Oxfam, KEI and UAEM.

Today and tomorrow there are several meetings here where NGOs are taking
about ways to support getting licenses into the pool. There have also
been a number of private meetings with pharmaceutical companies that
have gone surprisingly well. In one private meeting, a company that had
been very opposed to the pool agreed to revisit the issue with a more
open mind.

--
James Love, Director, Knowledge Ecology International
http://www.keionline.org | mailto:james.love at keionline.org
Wk: +1.202.332.2671 | US Mobile +1.202.361.3040 | Geneva Mobile +41.76.413.=
6584