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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual Property Law
Improving Antibiotic Markets For Long Term Sustainability, Kevin Outterson
Improving Antibiotic Markets For Long Term Sustainability, Kevin Outterson
Faculty Scholarship
The world faces a worsening public health crisis: A growing number of bacteria are resistant to available antibiotics. Yet there are few new antibiotics in the development pipeline to take the place of these increasingly ineffective drugs. We review a number of proposals intended to bolster drug development, including such financial incentives for pharmaceutical manufacturers as extending the effective patent life for new antibiotics. However, such strategies directly conflict with the clear need to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions and could actually increase prescription use. As an alternative, we recommend a two-prong, “integrated” strategy based on prizes administered through the insurance …
Death From The Public Domain?, Kevin Outterson
Death From The Public Domain?, Kevin Outterson
Faculty Scholarship
In his recent article in the Texas Law Review, Ben Roin advances the claim that pharmaceutical innovation and the public’s health are harmed by the doctrines of non-obviousness and novelty. He does not mince words, labeling the nonobvious requirement as “perversity” with a “pernicious” effect on drug development. In his view, these standards pose an insurmountable barrier for drug companies seeking to commercialize inventions already in the public domain. He claims that valuable, life-saving drug ideas languish in the public domain because the companies face high barriers to entry from the FDA, but potential free riders are encouraged through the …
The Vanishing Public Domain: Antibiotic Resistance, Pharmaceutical Innovation And Global Public Health, Kevin Outterson
The Vanishing Public Domain: Antibiotic Resistance, Pharmaceutical Innovation And Global Public Health, Kevin Outterson
Faculty Scholarship
Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride goes before a fall. The evolutionary pressure of antibiotic use selects for resistant strains with the least fitness cost. Effective drugs should be used. But when they are used, no matter how carefully, evolutionary pressure for resistance is created. The problem is not limited to antibiotics. Variants of the human immunodeficiency (AIDS) virus develop resistance to anti-retroviral …