#drug patents

[rolandtowen]

hello.

I have returned from the trenches of Twitter to inform yall that there is an effort to mobilize against Johnson & Johnson's decision to extend their patent on a life-saving tuberculosis drug. Renewing this patent will prevent millions of people from accessing life-saving care.

If you would like to learn more, watch this video:

If you would like to do something, you can make memes, @ J&J on social media, and report your concerns here:

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html

#john green #hank green #tuberculosis #johnson & johnson #johnson and johnson #j&j #TB #twitter #vlogbrothers #dftba #nerdfighters #nerdfighteria #bedaquiline #big pharma #scishow #crashcourse #the green brothers #youtube #drug patents #us news #not atla

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Global genocide, what a beautiful choice...

In case you missed it - and a golf update seems to have knocked it off the front page - Republicans are threatening to kill millions of people in order to protect "the unborn child." No, not just pregnant women like usual, but men and children - everyone.

The US has been giving HIV/AIDS meds to people who can't afford them, internationally, for about two decades. Most of the institutions distributing these meds are Catholic. Catholics are infamously anti-abortion - to the point of allowing mothers to suffer and die, just like Republicans! This program has a requirement to spend money teaching abstinence - it was penned into law by G. W. Bush! It seems like there shouldn't be a conflict of interest between these two groups, but there is now, and there's a clock ticking down to when these people won't get the meds they need to stay alive.

I suspect our old friend "intellectual property" also has a hand in this situation. It doesn't look like we've spent any money over the last two decades on building infrastructure so these places can make their own damn meds, we just buy them premade and ship them. Actually helping these places manufacture these very expensive drugs would eat into the profits of the pharmaceutical companies that "own" them. It's much better for Gilead there if people just buy drugs and send them. We can just keep doing that forever, right? It's good PR!

Well, now we're in a position where a grandstanding, megalomaniacal political party can hold millions of orphaned children hostage while crowing that they're "saving babies". The Republican solution is that these foreigners should be "responsible" and pay for their own meds... while US companies sit on the patents and jack up the damn prices as high as the market will bear. Yeah, that'll work great.

I've already fled the States. If Democrats can't stop this from happening... You... You can't expect me to keep filling out a ballot and giving you a fig leaf of legitimacy. I found out this year that you didn't even stop stealing children at the border. You can't ask me to keep behaving like it's going to be fine and the system can heal itself if I just keep participating in it. I don't want anything to do with this. I am being dragged kicking and screaming to check a box for people who throw up their hands and refuse to help because, I dunno, maybe this time they might? And then they try to tell me this is my fault, for not being centrist enough.

I dunno what I'm gonna do. I mean, distract myself. Keep redistributing wealth by fair means and foul. And keep yelling about these things. But apart from that...?

#us politics #global politics #abortion #hiv #aids #republicans #democrats #drug patents #price gouging #capitalism #imperialism #just bad shit all around #i don't want to live on this planet anymore

[ailurinae]

The ethics complaint link he mentions: https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html

#tuberculosis #johnson and johnson #bedaquiline #drug patents #patent extension bullshit #my posts #video #Youtube

[freyrsolutions]

#Pharmaceutical companies #US FDA #Regulatory Affairs #New Chemical Entity (NCE) #NCE minus 1 #Paragraph IV Filing #Drug patents

[lfnewswire]

Capuano IP Launches New Website

Capuano IP Launches New Website

Salem, MA (Law Firm Newswire) May 03, 2022 – . Capuano IP announced today that its new website, CapuanoIP.com, has been launched. Founded in 2020, the firm is a micro-boutique intellectual property practice that provides expert IP and litigation services to clients in the chemistry, pharmaceutical, and related life sciences. Capuano IP brings to bear extensive experience in both district court…

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#Biotech Patents #Chemistry Attorney #Drug Patents #Life Science Patents #Patent Litigation Attorney

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it

Today (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Tomorrow (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.

There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:

https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf

And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "evergreening" – coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/

Evergreening got a lot of attention recently when John Green rained down righteous fire upon Johnson & Johnson for their sneaky tricks to prevent poor people from accessing affordable TB meds, prompting this excellent explainer from the Arm and A Leg Podcast:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

Another thing those monopoly profits are useful for: "pay for delay," where pharma companies bribe generic manufacturers not to make cheap versions of drugs whose patents have expired. Sure, it's illegal, but that doesn't stop 'em:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/competition-enforcement/pay-delay

But it's their money, right? If they want to spend it on bribes or evergreening or marketing, at least some of that money is going into drugs that'll keep you and the people you love from enduring unimaginable pain or dying slowly and hard. Surely that warrants a patent.

Let's say it does. But what about when a pharma company gets a patent on a life-saving drug that the public paid to develop, test and refine? Publicly funded work is presumptively in the public domain, from NASA R&D to the photos that park rangers shoot of our national parks. The public pays to produce this work, so it should belong to the public, right?

That was the deal – until Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Under Bayh-Dole, government-funded inventions are given away – to for-profit corporations, who get to charge us whatever they want to access the things we paid to make. The basis for this is a racist hoax called "The Tragedy Of the Commons," written by the eugenicist white supremacist Garrett Hardin and published by Science in 1968:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin invented an imaginary history in which "commons" – things owned and shared by a community – are inevitably overrun by selfish assholes, a fact that prompts nice people to also overrun these commons, so as to get some value out of them before they are gobbled up by people who read Garrett Hardin essays.

Hardin asserted this as a historical fact, but he cited no instances in which it happened. But when the Nobel-winning Elinor Ostrom actually went and looked at how commons are managed, she found that they are robust and stable over long time periods, and are a supremely efficient way of managing resources:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

The reason Hardin invented an imaginary history of tragic commons was to justify enclosure: moving things that the public owned and used freely into private ownership. Or, to put it more bluntly, Hardin invented a pseudoscientific justification for giving away parks, roads and schools to rich people and letting them charge us to use them.

To arrive at this fantasy, Hardin deployed one of the most important analytical tools of modern economics: introspection. As Ely Devons put it: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Hardin's hoax swept from the fringes to the center and became received wisdom – so much so that by 1980, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole were able to pass a law that gave away publicly funded medicine to private firms, because otherwise these inventions would be "overgrazed" by greedy people, denying the public access to livesaving drugs.

On September 21, the NIH quietly published an announcement of one of these pharmaceutical transfers, buried in a list of 31 patent assignments in the Federal Register:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-20487.pdf

The transfer in question is a patent for using T-cell receptors (TCRs) to treat solid tumors from HPV, one of the only patents for treating solid tumors with TCRs. The beneficiary of this transfer is Scarlet TCR, a Delaware company with no website or SEC filings and ownership shrouded in mystery:

https://www.bizapedia.com/de/scarlet-tcr-inc.html

One person who pays attention to this sort of thing is James Love, co-founder of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that has worked for decades for access to medicines. Love sleuthed out at least one person behind Scarlet TCR: Christian Hinrichs, a researcher at Rutgers who used to work at the NIH's National Cancer Institute:

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/lasker-clinical-research-scholars/tenured-former-scholars

Love presumes Hinrichs is the owner of Scarlet TCR, but neither the NIH nor Scarlet TCR nor Hinrichs will confirm it. Hinrichs was one of the publicly-funded researchers who worked on the new TCR therapy, for which he received a salary.

This new drug was paid for out of the public purse. The basic R&D – salaries for Hinrichs and his collaborators, as well as funding for their facilities – came out of NIH grants. So did the funding for the initial Phase I trial, and the ongoing large Phase II trial.

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, the proposed patent transfer will make Hinrichs a very wealthy man (Love calls it "generational wealth"):

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

This wealth will come by charging us – the public – to access a drug that we paid to produce. The public took all the risks to develop this drug, and Hinrichs stands to become a billionaire by reaping the rewards – rewards that will come by extracting fortunes from terrified people who don't want to die from tumors that are eating them alive.

The transfer of this patent is indefensible. The government isn't even waiting until the Phase II trials are complete to hand over our commonly owned science.

But there's still time. The NIH is about to get a new director, Monica Bertagnolli – Hinrichs's former boss – who will need to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. Love is hoping that the confirmation hearing will present an opportunity to question Bertagnolli about the transfer – specifically, why the drug isn't being nonexclusively licensed to lots of drug companies who will have to compete to sell the cheapest possible version.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #pharma #incentives dont matter #incentives matter #drugs #uspto #nih #national institutes of health #cancer #patents #kei #knowledge ecology international #james love #jamie love #bayh-dole #bayh-dole act #tcr #scarlet tcr #t-cell receptor #Christian Hinrichs #entrepreneurial state #human papillomavirus #hpv #solid tumors #monopolies

[petitelappin]

I've started a hilarious game of AI Dungeon with my dear friend @adhdalistair where I've been able to dust off my old con artist tiefling OC, Doc Fitzgerald, equal parts swindler and healer.

#my art #digital art #sketchbook #ocs #this revamp of her is based more heavily on annie oakley's face #than the previous one was #the priest collar is part of her ruse. her primary scam is posing as a travelling cleric of ilmater to sell 'potions' that are not magic #most of it is just regular nonmagical drugs in the old patent medicine style but she also has genuine folk remedies she's picked up #one day she will get smited or something but i think the fact that she does technically provide people w minor healing has saved her so far #unsmote on technicality

[commiepinkofag]

IF?

The government will give the public 60 days to comment on the new proposal before attempting to finalize it.

^^^ COMMENT vvv

#capitalism #healthcare is a human right #drug lobby #big pharma #drug manufacturers #economics #healthcare #public health #medicine #health care #patents #us politics

[void-thegod]

isnt infringing on individual sovereignty wrong?

esp if that person is not physically harming another with their actions?

i can hear the stupid arguments now.

but someone smoking weed or being queer is not physically harming anyone.

besides: if mf can run around with guns to protect their body, why cant i run around with weed to protect my body and mind??

#cannabis #marijuana #legalize #gun control #2nd amendment #second amendment #sovereignty #self determination #america #our democracy is very fucked up #needs a update into something better #that acknowledges the bigotry/greed that has poisoned true freedom in this country #mf laws against living sustainably #not to mention patents on tech that could change the world #conspiracy #drugs #vote blue

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]

Rough on Rats: From the Office of Cynical Speculation

Since using dangerous and/or addictive compounds in patent “medicines” was common and we know Ephraim had large quantities of arsenic on his hands, I wonder how many of his other products contained traces of this dangerous element. A number of the claims made in the ads for Wells’ beauty aids and “medicines” sound remarkably similar to the effects (the crazy people during the Victorian era)…

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#1906 pure food and drug act #e.s. wells #my 52 weeks with christie #mystery #patent medicine #rough on rats #Well&039;s hair basalm

[agreenroad]

7 Pharmakeia, Pharmakon, and Pharmakoi Verses In Bible

“The Sackler family, one of the richest in the country, has made their fortune on sales of the prescription pain killer OxyContin. The drug was introduced in the mid-1990s and since that time, there have been 200,000 deaths in the U.S from prescription opioids. https://dianerehm.org/shows/2019-04-12/the-family-that-profited-from-prescription-opioids Six doctors charged in 500 million opioid…

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#Big Pharma #idolaters #liars #magic spells #mammon #murderers #negative side effects #pain relieving drugs #patent drugs #pharmakeia #pharmakoi #pharmakon

[dizinfo]

Drug Patents and Drug Exclusivity

How long do drug patents last, and can you get them extended? Let's check it out!

If you've ever wondered why some drugs are more expensive than others and why you can only get certain drugs from specific pharmaceutical companies, then you're not alone.

Why are there more affordable generic versions of some drugs available but not all drugs?

Thanks to the FDA and its comprehensive guide on pharmaceutical patents, these are just some of the questions we will answer below in our drug patent FAQs.

Drug Patent FAQs Answered

A drug patent can be issued or expire at any time, regardless of the drug's current approval status. Exclusivity attaches to the drug upon approval of the drug or product as long as the statutory requirements have been met.

While some new drugs may have both patent and exclusivity protection, others may have one or the other or none at all. Exclusivity was created and designed as a way to promote a balance between new drug innovation and greater public access, which results from generic drug competition.

Developing new drugs can be not only time-consuming but also expensive. If generic versions of drugs were immediately allowed to hit the market, then drug companies wouldn't be able to recoup the financial costs associated with new drugs.

By granting limited patent and exclusivity periods, it creates a balance between promoting new drug development and giving patients better and more affordable access to generic drugs in the long term.

Drug patents are set in place by statute. The current term for a new drug patent is twenty years from the date the application was filed in the United States. There are a variety of other factors which may also affect the length of the patent.

There are extensions that pharmaceutical companies can apply for, which will enable them to recoup some of the lost time spent in the FDA approval process. This extension period covers up to five years, depending on the length of the approval proces

#Drug Patents and Drug Exclusivity

[texploration]

Texploration Profiles: Lantern Pharma

Innovating Cancer Treatment with Precision and Technology In the realm of biotechnology, where hope and science converge, stands Lantern Pharma, a beacon of innovation in the fight against cancer. Founded in 2013, this Dallas-based company is not just another biotech firm; it represents a pivotal shift in how we approach cancer treatment. Today, we delve into how Lantern Pharma is…

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#ai #artificial intelligence #cancer #drug discovery #healthcare #IP #medical #oncology #patent #tech

[reasonsforhope]

Sorry I'm kind of dissociated and my vocab crashes during that can you explain the Biden drug thing in just. Shorter simple sentences.

Sure! You're not the only one who's mentioned being unclear on what it means either, and I'm happy to help

(Context for anyone else: US Sets Policy to Seize Patents of Government-Funded Drugs if Price Deemed Too High, via Good News Network, December 11, 2023)

From the very basics:

When drug companies create new drugs, they get a legal protection called a "patent." The patent means no one else can make or sell the same drug for whatever number of years.

Usually, this is about 10 years after the drug starts being sold to the public.

So, for those years, that one drug company is the only source of whatever medication. And since people need their medication, drug companies can charge however much money they want.

Meaning a lot of drugs that people need to live cost way too much money to buy.

So, with this, Biden told drug companies "Fuck you, if you keep making medicine too $$$ for people to afford, I'm giving your competition the right to make and sell those drugs too."

The US has never done anything like this before.

This is a huge threat to the whole (awful) drug industry in the US. It will save people thousands of dollars. If he does this, it will save lives.

--

Edit 12/17/23: Quick note, as people have said in the notes, this only applies to drugs made in part using taxpayer money. Which is! Literally all of them!

#Anonymous #prescription drugs #medicine #public health #biden #biden administration #united states #us politics #ask #me #good news #hope

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

Goods and Services and Canna Trademarks

By Fred Rocafort, Attorney at Harris Sliwoski Goods and services (G&S) identifications are a critical part of a cannabis trademark application, as with any other trademark application. An improper identification can delay an application, and in the worst cases prove fatal. Cannabis brands in particular have to be very careful when it comes to G&S. Trademark rights are linked to specific goods and…

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#Controlled Substances Act (CSA) #Drug #Federal Food #Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) #The US Patent and Trademark Office’s (“USPTO”) #trademarks #USPTO

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2016, Japanese scientists Oda and Hiraga published their discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium capable of breaking down PET plastic into basic nutrients. This finding marked a shift in microbiology's perception, recognizing the potential of microbes to solve pressing environmental issues.

France's Carbios has successfully applied bacterial enzyme technology to recycle PET plastic waste into new plastic products, aligning with the French government's goal of fully recycling plastic packaging by 2025.

2. HIV cases in Amsterdam drop to almost zero after PrEP scheme

According to Dutch AIDS Fund, there were only nine new cases of the virus in Amsterdam in 2022, down from 66 people diagnosed in 2021. The organisation claimed that 128 people were diagnosed with HIV in Amsterdam in 2019, and since 2010, the number of new infections in the Dutch capital has fallen by 95 per cent.

3. Cheap and drinkable water from desalination is finally a reality

In a groundbreaking endeavor, engineers from MIT and China have designed a passive solar desalination system aimed at converting seawater into drinkable water.

The concept, articulated in a study published in the journal Joule, harnesses the dual powers of the sun and the inherent properties of seawater, emulating the ocean’s “thermohaline” circulation on a smaller scale, to evaporate water and leave salt behind.

4. World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.

5. After Decades of Pressure, US Drugmaker J&J Gives Up Patent on Life-Saving TB Drug

In what can be termed a huge development for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients across large parts of the world, bedaquiline maker Johnson and Johnson said on September 30 (Saturday) that it would drop its patent over the drug in 134 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

6. Stranded dolphins rescued from shallow river in Massachusetts

7. ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done but that the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

---

That's it for this week :)

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#best news of last week #Youtube