WHO offers few details on progress of global health and IP strategy

IP Watch released the following report on the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property and their lack of transparency:

Work is ongoing within the World Health Organization on a member-mandated global strategy on public health, innovation and intellectual property, a WHO official said Tuesday. But little information about that work has been forthcoming since the strategy was approved in May.

The “silence of the WHO doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing work,” said Malebona Precious Matsoso, who directs the WHO Department of Technical Cooperation for Essential Medicines, speaking at an informal seminar hosted by IQsensato on 23 September. “We are cautious; we cannot communicate things that have not been formally recognised.”

…much work lies ahead on key decisions contained in the global strategy and plan of action. This includes assessing priority needs of developing countries in medical research and development, improving developing country capacity for R&D, and implementing alternative funding strategies to stimulate R&D.
Matsoso said that the WHO had “consciously identified those partners we think need to work with us” and that the organisation had had several meetings with different stakeholders.

She later explained that many of these stakeholders were researchers, often in developing countries, as well as public health associations, doctors and distributors of medicines. These are people, she said, whose day-to-day work will be affected by WHO decisions but who may not understand the implications of those decisions. They often “come back to us saying they need their own assemblies to assess” the document, she added.

Matsoso also said the WHO is working on a “matrix” detailing what activities mentioned in the global strategy already exist, what activities need scaling up, and what activities constitute new work, so that the organisation can decide out how to budget the programmes. “We’re hoping to finalise it soon and share it with you,” she said.

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1241

600% increase in number of patent filings in India (from 2000-2007)

According to India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and Intellectual Property Rights, the number of patents filed in India increased by 600 per cent between the fiscal years 1999-2000 and 2006-2007.

“In the era of globalisation, the importance of IPR is growing and has become imperial to the growth of Indian economy.” — Sujit Gulati, IAS, state industries commisioner.

More details on this government report are provided in the following article from the Business Standard:

If the total number of IPR applications filed in the country is an indication, then India is creating a conducive environment for innovations. According to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), the filing of patent applications has increased from 4824 in the year 1999-2000 to 28,882 applications in the year 2006-2007. As against 8,010 trademark (TM) registrations in 1999-2000, 109,361 TMs were registered in 2006-07. Also, the filing of applications for design has increased from 2874 in 1999-2000 to 5372 in 2006-07.

Out of these, there has been a significant increase in the number of patent applications filed in the computer/electronics and biotechnology fields in recent years, due to the intensive research and development activities taking place in these sectors. One of the main reasons for the growth in the number of patent applications filed in India has been attributed to the government’s initiatives to strengthen the IPR in India, in collaboration with industry and academia.

“In the era of globalisation, the importance of IPR is growing and has become imperial to the growth of Indian economy. Companies like Cadila Pharmaceuticals and Dishman have positively adhered to the IPR, keeping intact the confidence of businesses of the world in Gujarat,” said Sujit Gulati, IAS, state industries commisioner at a seminar on ‘Intellectual Property for Prosperity’, organised in Ahmedabad by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the US embassy in India.

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Patients’ Manifesto launched in European Parliament

The European Patient Forum (EPF) launched a patients’ manifesto (or bill or rights) in the European Parliament yesterday.  The following press release from the EPF outlines their call to action for the empowerment and protection of patients across Europe:

(Sept. 16, 2008)  The European Patients’ Forum launched today a Patients Manifesto in the European Parliament outlining vital new measures in three fundamental areas to improve quality of healthcare across the European Union. EPF calls for

• Equal and timely access to safe, effective diagnosis, treatments and support;
• Better information and resources for patients to be partners in determining their care; and
• A patients’ voice to be heard in Brussels and throughout the European Union.

The lead-up to the forthcoming European Parliamentary Elections and new Commission is a time to set new political priorities, and commit to take action.

EPF President Anders Olauson said “Our current health systems can be unfair, divisive and fail to put the patients‟ perspective first. We believe all patients within the EU have a basic right to equal access to quality medical treatment, regardless of where they live, their status or their income.

The Manifesto, developed by the EPF membership, who collectively represent over 150 million patients, citizens and voters ‘call upon all the political groups within the European Parliament, MEPs, prospective MEPs, national representatives in EU Member States, and the new Commission, to commit to the legitimate rights and needs of patients and to make our proposals their priority’.

Dagmar Roth Behrendt, MEP who hosted the launch in the European Parliament welcomed the Manifesto “This Manifesto – from patients themselves – provides a road map for all of us committed to improving healthcare in Europe. I am especially pleased to see the Manifesto calls for a comprehensive strategy on “Information to Patients” in Europe and pro-active work on health literacy – this is a crucial driver behind patients‟ centred, quality healthcare.

Strengthening the economies of developping countries through intellectual property

As reported in This Day Online, Assistant Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, has advocated a structured approach in harnessing Nigeria’s intellectual property assets, which he said  remained one of the tools for economic development.

“The most important source of technological information known to man today is the patent system. And Nigeria needs to seize the opportunity”, he stated.

The top WIPO official said the country has creative sectors such as the pharmaceutical, music and film industries, research sector, cultural sector and individual inventors that remain untapped.

“In a world increasingly geared towards wealth creation through intellectual property, Nigeria has vast opportunities to diversify its economy. The level of awareness at the policy level is important”, he said.

“Nigeria’s strategy should be to increase our intellectual property assets by strengthening the necessary institutions, giving them the autonomy to operate and enacting legislation to achieve these objectives”.

“Oil is the mainstay of our economy now. When oil finishes, what you will need to be competitive is a knowledge economy. Countries like Switzerland, Singapore and Japan have no natural resources but have built their wealth based on intellectual assets”.

Different Perspectives on Funding Innovation – Europe vs. USA

US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt recently spoke at a conference in Paris regarding the importance of pharmaceutical innovation.  The following article demonstrates two different perspectives on funding innovation — essentially market forces vs. government price fixing.

US Health Sec warns Europe of “world without innovation”

Government price-fixing of new medicines is “the road to a world without innovation,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has warned European health care regulators and politicians.

An estimated $5-$8 billion is eliminated from pharmaceutical R&D spending every year as a result of government price controls on medicines, and if the US federal government were to start negotiating prices, as those in Europe do, this would harm US innovation and could lead to patients in both Europe in the USA being denied access to important drugs, Sec Leavitt told a conference in Paris, France, yesterday, which was organised by IMS and France’s research-based pharmaceutical industry group LEEM. “Such systems support the wrong things,” he said, and urged Europe to consider more market-driven systems.

Europe also has a very serious stake in the current debate on the affordability of the US care system, added Sec Leavitt. There are two competing philosophies about the government role in health care, he said; the first is that it should “own” the system, which would include price-setting, and the second says the government’s role is to organise the system.

While his own view is that the government’s role is to ensure that its citizens have access to affordable insurance policies, Sec Leavitt said that both competing philosophies are present in the US system; 60% of the market is covered by private insurance and 40% by the government. Both have drawbacks – government systems lack consumer sensitivity, while private systems have gaps in coverage – but these issues are fixable, he said.

US Medicare, which provides health care for seniors and the disabled, is a model for all other systems because it is the largest player – nothing else has the ability to shape like Medicare, he said. It does not negotiate prices with manufacturers for its prescription drug benefit, which is known as Part D and was introduced three years ago, but does so for every other service offered by the programme. “Make no mistake, the government sets prices,” he said.

Sub-prime crisis? “warm summer rain”

But Medicare is “quality-indifferent,” it lacks the discipline and restraints of a global budget and it is now facing the real possibility of insolvency within a decade. If that happens, the economic consequences for the USA will make the sub-prime mortgage crisis look like “warm summer rain,” said Sec Leavitt.

The Medicare Part D drug benefit has created a generation of increasingly skilled health care consumers, as it enables beneficiaries to choose the insurance plan which suits them best, he said. The government organises the programme but does not bear the risks – the insurers do that – and to date, 93% of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries who are eligible to enrol in the benefit have done so, 85% of them are happy and the programme’s costs are turning out be 40% lower than government actuaries had forecast at the time it was introduced.

The lower costs are due to competition, he said; the insurance plans “grind pharmaceutical manufacturers to the lowest possible price.” Sec Leavitt also told the meeting that while he gets complaints about virtually every other part of the health system, where Medicare fixes the prices, he gets no complaints about Part D, where it does not.

However, the US and European systems can learn from each other but they are completely different and cannot be compared or copied, European Commissioner for Health Androulla Vassiliou told the conference. Responding to Sec Leavitt’s comments that US consumers are funding the world’s pharmaceutical R&D, the Commissioner said that Europe does not want to leave innovation to the USA, and that the way forward is to create funding for innovation through the increased use of cheaper generics.

France Hails Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Protection Efforts

The following article regarding Taiwan’s high standards for IPR was posted by Yahoo News.

A high-ranking French official has lauded Taiwan for achieving international standards in protecting intellectual property rights (IPR).

Benoit Battistelli, director-general of France’s National Industrial Property Institute (INPI), gave his praise in an address delivered at a forum on Taiwan’s investment environment.

Battistelli said that Taiwan has been protecting IPR in line with international standards and maintaining close cooperation with the European Union, Spain and Germany.

Battistelli particularly mentioned that during his visit to Taiwan in 2005, executives of Taiwan branches of 150 French companies told him that they were pleased with the Taiwan government’s IPR protection efforts.

Speaking on the same occasion, Taiwan Representative to France Michel C. L. Lu said that the public and private sectors in Taiwan are working to comply with international IPR laws.

Describing Taiwan as a quality partner of France’s, Lu encouraged French companies to invest in Taiwan to create a win-win situation.

The forum was held soon after the Taiwan-France 8th annual industrial property rights meeting in the Burgundian capital of Dijon earlier in the day.

During the meeting, delegates from both sides discussed Taiwan’s progress in amending its Patent Act and the role that France will play as the current chair of the EU, Lu said.

The two sides also formulated work plans for future cooperation, Lu added.

Wang Mei-hua, director-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) Intellectual Property Office and leader of the Taiwan delegation, invited Battistelli to visit Taiwan next year and hold the 9th meeting there, Lu related.