PHM-Exch> Time for the drug companies to hand over their patents

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Meghana Bahar <meghana at haiap.org>

So the medicines patent pool scores its first triumph. UNITAID, the
Geneva-based organisation that aims to improve access to medicines in the
developing world, announced today that is has been given its first patents
on Aids drugs. We are on the way to the brave new world where the
phenomenally expensive but very effective HIV/Aids drugs taken by people in
the USA and Europe can be replicated by generic manufacturers in India, who
can make clever, dirt-cheap new combinations to keep more people alive in
the poorest regions of the planet. Or are we?

The first philanthropic donor is not a multinational drug company. It's the
NIH - the National Institutes of Health, which is the medical research
establishment of the US government. It holds quite a number of patents on
the inventions and discoveries of its scientists. It has now anounced it
will license its patent on darunavir, a drug in the protease inhibitor class
of medicines (one of the three drug classes needed for combination
antiretroviral therapy) to the pool. And it is going to look through its
entire portfolio to see what else might be useful.

All of that is excellent news. But in a way, it is no more than we should
expect from NIH. And unfortunately, it is not (yet) going to help people
with HIV infection in poor countries. NIH is not the sole patent holder on
darunavir. Additional patents are held by the drug company Tibotec, which is
owned by the US manufacturing giant Johnson & Johnson.

Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of Medecins sans Frontier's campaign for
access to essential medicines, says the good part is that the NIH commitment
"demonstrates serious political backing" for the pool.

But this single patent isn't enough to allow a cheaper version of the
medicine to be produced. We need to build on this - the onus is on the drug
companies that own patents on this and other key Aids medicines to put their
patents in the Pool.

Tibotec must clearly be under pressure now to do the right thing, and hand
over its patents on darunavir too. And as Oxfam says, it is time for the
leading antiretroviral manufacturers to join them. They have in mind Viiv -
which is an alliance of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. This is Oxfam senior
policy advisor Mohga Kamal-Yanni's view:

One patent is not enough. Successful treatment of HIV requires a combination
of medicines, so companies need to step up to the plate and contribute their
patents.

Companies such as ViiV, that claim to be socially responsible while refusing
to cooperate with this initiative to make life-saving medicines available to
poor people are guilty of outrageous double standards. They now have no
excuse for not joining the pool.


(c) 2010 Guardian Newspapers Limited.
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