Archive for November, 2005
Supreme Court to enter the patent reform debate?
The original reports that are viewed by many as catalysts for the patent reform movement in the United States include at least one reform proposal that, to date, has largely been ignored. In To Promote Innovation, the Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy, the Federal Trade Commission recommends a tightening of “certain legal [...]
Emotion gives way to reason - cries for compulsory license subside as negotiated deals on Tamiflu begin to appear
The initial cries for immediate issuance of compulsory licenses for the production of Tamiflu, the Roche drug which may be effective against some strains of avian flu, have subsided in recent weeks. Emotion appears to have given way to reason as negotiated deals are slowly appearing.
Vietnam, the country hit the hardest by the strain (H5N1) [...]
FDA and orphan drugs - one of the other “monopoly makers”
The FDA-regulated industries have many non-patent tools at their disposal to achieve and/or ensure market exclusivity for their products. One of the least well known of the FDA “monopoly makers” is the Orphan Drug Act of 1983. Under the Act, the FDA is able to grant orphan drug status to a drug intended to [...]
J. Matthew Buchanan joining Dunlap, Codding & Rogers
I am very pleased to announce that my professional practice will be associated with the law firm of Dunlap, Codding & Rogers, P.C. (DCR) as of December 1st.
As most readers of Promote the Progress can guess, my relationship with DCR stems from my collaboration with Doug Sorocco, the driving force behind PHOSITA, DCR’s award-winning intellectual property blog. Doug [...]
Ireland as tax haven for intellectual property
The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article yesterday on the practice of multinational companies using operations in Ireland to shield income earned on intellectual property from taxation by the United States and other countries. The article is quite extensive, and is easily one of the most interesting intellectual property pieces I’ve read in [...]
House Subcommittee on the Judiciary schedules markup of PTO bill creating refund-based anti-fee diversion system
The House Subcommittee on the Judiciary has scheduled a markup hearing for H.R. 2791, the Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2005 (PTFMA), for Wednesday, November 9, 2005.
PTFMA was introduced on the same day as the Patent Act of 2005 and includes the controversial anti-fee diversion provisions that were excised from last year’s major [...]
Boston Globe on Tamiflu compulsory licenses - protect patents, don’t break them
The Boston Globe ran an op-ed piece two days ago that I consider to be the most coherent and well-structured argument against the use of compulsory licensing of Tamiflu patents that has appeared in traditional media to date.
The Globe argues that “breaking” the Tamiflu patent is wrong from a basic private property point-of-view, that doing [...]
