E-DRUG: Berkeley Law HIV & Neglected Disease Therapy Patent Pool Workshop
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Berkeley Law is organizing a workshop on UNITAID's and GlaxoSmithKline's
patent pool initatives, and registration is now open. There is recent,
unprecedented support for patent pooling initiatives: UNITAID is developing
a patent pool for HIV therapies, and GSK opened its neglected diseases pool
earlier this year, and recently celebrated the donation of over 1,500
patented technologies from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. As more companies and
labs consider participating, Berkeley Law will host thought-leaders from
throughout the biomedical R+D community to consider how the pools can work,
and explore issues around their management, design, and implementation. We're
bringing together actors from both private (GlaxoSmithKline, Gilead, Alylam,
sanofi-aventis, Merck, and others) and not-for-profit sectors (UC Berkeley,
UCLA, Stanford, Columbia, the National Institutes of Health, Doctors Without
Borders, UNITAID, Knowledge Ecology International, the Medicines for Malaria
Venture and others), for a one-day workshop on biotech patent pools.
For more information, including registration, directions, times, and more
resources, please see here -
www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/patentpools/about.html
Background: UNITAID is in the late stages of planning a patent pool for HIV
medicines. Glaxo just opened its patent pool for neglected disease
therapies. The basic model is one adopted from MPEG and DVD patent pools -
essential technologies are managed by a central licensor, and licensees
rapidly and cheaply access the IP to make new formulations, especially the
missing pediatric and DOTS-friendly formulations. For neglected diseases,
like TB, Malaria, Chagas, the challenge is leveraging the resources of big
actors (like Glaxo, or Pfizer) and all of their IP so that an actor, like
the Medicines for Malaria Venture, can access some crucial technology
quickly, cheaply, and with near-zero transaction costs.
You can also register there. Limited funding is available to cover
registration and travel costs. Please contact Jay Purcell (Purcell [at]
berkeley [dot] edu) for more information.
Jay Purcell
Dr. Mike Gretes
Connie Chen
UC Berkeley School of Law
University of British
Columbia University of California, San Francisco
Jay Purcell <jlp556@gmail.com>