Law Commons^™

The Politics Of Patents And Drugs In Brazil And Mexico: The Industrial Bases Of Health Policies, Kenneth C. Shadlen

Ken Shadlen

After introducing pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s, Brazil subsequently adjusted the patent system to ameliorate its effects on drug prices while Mexico introduced measures that reinforce and intensify these effects. The different trajectories are due to the nature of the actors pushing for reform and subsequent patterns of coalitional formation and political mobilization. In Brazil, government demand for expensive, patented drugs made health-oriented patent reform a priority, and the existence of an autonomous local pharmaceutical sector allowed the Ministry of Health to build a supportive coalition. In Mexico, government demand made reforms less urgent, and transformations of the pharmaceutical sector …

Stifling Or Stimulating - The Role Of Gene Patents In Research And Genetic Testing, Lawrence M. Sung

Lawrence M. Sung

No abstract provided.

Tying, Price Discrimination And Antitrust Policy, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

ABSTRACT

A tying arrangement is a seller’s requirement that a customer may purchase its “tying” product only by taking its “tied” product. In a variable proportion tie the purchaser can vary her purchases of the tied product. For example, a customer might purchase a single printer, but either a contract or technological design requires her to purchase varying numbers of printer cartridges from the same manufacturer. Such arrangements are widely considered to be price discrimination devices, but their economic effects have been controversial.

Price discrimination comes in various “degrees.” In third degree price discrimination the seller isolates two or more …

Ip And Antitrust: Errands Into The Wilderness, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

IP AND ANTITRUST: ERRANDS INTO THE WILDERNESS

ABSTRACT

Antitrust and intellectual property law both seek to promote economic welfare by facilitating competition and investment in innovation. At various times both antitrust and IP law have wandered off this course and have become more driven by special interests. Today, antitrust and IP are on very different roads to reform. Antitrust began an Errand into the Wilderness in the late 1970s with a series of Supreme Court decisions that linked the plaintiff’s harm and right to obtain a remedy to the competition-furthering goals of antitrust policy. Today, patent law has begun its …

The Technicality Requirement, Patents Scope And Patentable Subject Matter In Australia, William Van Caenegem

William Van Caenegem

The technicality requirement confines patentable subject matter to practical processes and products. It excludes theoretical knowledge and methods of conducting services as such from patentability. In a post-industrial age, there may be good arguments to abandon this limiting requirement, because innovation has become highly scientific and because services now form such an important part of industrial activity. However, because the underlying effect of the requirement is to limit the scope of patent claims, it should arguably be retained: patents of excessively broad scope have a negative aggregate welfare effect. In any case, even within the constraints of technicality, courts applying …

Firms' Global Patent Strategies In An Emerging Technology, Andrea Fernandez-Ribas

Andrea Fernandez-Ribas

Despite international patenting can be a costly and risky investment, an increasing number of firms patent proprietary technologies in foreign countries. This paper explores trends of global patenting in a new domain of technology characterized by rapid globalization. The research setting consists of the population of U.S.-based Large and Small and Mid-Sized firms (SMEs) filing nanotechnology-related patent applications at the World International Patent Office (WIPO) during 1996-2006.

This paper appears in: Science and Innovation Policy, 2009 Atlanta Conference on Publication Date: 2-3 Oct. 2009 On page(s): 1-5 ISBN: 978-1-4244-5041-1 INSPEC Accession Number: 11035266 DOI: 10.1109/ACSIP.2009.5367863 Posted online: 2009-12-28 12:00:57.0

Of Mice And Men: Why An Anticommons Has Not Emerged In The Biotechnological Realm, Chester J. Shiu

Chester J Shiu

In 1998 Michael Heller and Rebecca Eisenberg posited that excessive patenting of fundamental biomedical innovations might create a “tragedy of the anticommons.” A decade later, their dire predictions have not come to pass, an outcome which calls much of the legal scholarship on the topic into question. This Article proposes that legal commentators’ theoretical arguments have largely ignored two very important factors. First, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the single most important actor in the biomedical research industry—has played an active role in keeping the biomedical research domain open. In particular, regardless of what the current patent regime may theoretically …

Article 53(B) Epc: A Challenge To The Novartis Theory Of European Patent History, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

In this article the authoritative ('Novartis/transgenic plant systems') interpretation of the Article 53(b) EPC exclusion from European patentability of plant and animal varieties, and essentially biological processes for the creation of plants and animals, is considered, and its significance for the trend of EPO jurisprudence and legitimacy of the EC Biotechnology Patenting Directive noted. The Enlarged Board of Appeal's justification for that interpretation in 'Novartis' with reference to the exclusion's legislative history is challenged, and an alternative theory of that history proposed, based on a thorough analysis of the unpublished 'travaux preparatoires' for the Strasbourg and European Patent Conventions. In …

Chemical Products And Proportionate Patents Before And After Generics V Lundbeck, Justine Pila

Justine Pila

In Generics Ltd v Lundbeck A/S (2009) UKHL 12, the House of Lords affirmed the validity of a patent for a chemical product - an isolated stereoisomer - supported by a method of producing the product, but protecting the chemical product as such independent of the method by which it was made. In so doing, it appears to have resolved a longstanding tension between granting patents for chemical products and requiring that the scope of monopoly rights equiperate with the disclosure in the specification. It also appears to have rejected the Biogen Inc v Medeva plc (1997) RPC 1 (HL) …

Who Owns Your Body? A Study In Literature And Law, Lori B. Andrews

Lori B. Andrews

No abstract provided.