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Violating A Patent As Moral Choice
kuzmich writes "The Taiwanese government has announced that it will violate patent laws to manufacture a drug that can help fight bird flu virus. In doing so, they have spelled out their reasoning very clearly: 'We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche, it means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing'. Not being in Taiwan, this makes me wonder how bad the situation would have to be for some of the other governments to follow a path of violating patent and copyright laws for the benefit of the general population. Are there precedents, procedures for doing so?"
They have their priorities straight. Stopping a potential pandemic is more important than not stepping on a businessman's toes.
This happened routinely during WWII in the US with patents and forced licensing agreements for technology deemed crucial to the war effort. Even my own great grandfather's manufacturing business (springs) was confiscated due to his ethnic background.
Hmm... I'm not saying you're wrong, but can't the government effectively decide/dictate its own "fair" price when invoking eminent domain? I've read a few stories in the past about people whose houses have been condemned for some highway project, complaining that they weren't paid enough for their property. So they can provide some compensation, but not the "market" price (which, let's face it, is decided by the pharmaceutical cartels -- er, I mean, companies -- anyway?). Most medicines are so ridiculously overpriced it's not even funny. (Like my one month's prescription that would cost $480 without insurance...)
At any rate, at the very least, the government can just take what it wants in the name of national security. It's what the US government did many times with new technologies that were needed for the war effort during World War II...
Oh, it's even more convoluted than that. They also subsidize research and buy most of your medicine. Push and pull at the same time. Government is schizoid, lavishly giving with one hand while taxing with the other.
But you're confusing the Taiwanese government and the US. The above applies to the Americans- what the Taiwanese has done is perfectly understandable and akin to what people have said about AIDS drugs.
Some profit is acceptable. At what point do you tell a company to just fuck off? How much higher profit can they have before you start thinking they're asking just too much? They're already making much better margins than many other industries.
And morally/ethically: how much are you willing to give to a foreign company to potentially save your countrymen and women's lives?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Actually, drugs for HIV are so expensive that most people in the poor countries can't afford them, and there's an AIDS epidemy in Africa! There's a doctor from Thailand (Krisana Kraisintu) who's mixed the three main ingredients for the HIV-pill, without paying attention to the patents of the big drugs companies. I've read a magazine article about her where she says she's gotten death threats telling her to stop producing her own version of the pill.
Talk about being nice..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I think this falls under the legal concept of eminent domain, which makes it legal for the state to use property for the public good. Usually this applies to real property and construction projects that will benefit the greater public, but I don't see why it wouldn't apply here.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
It doesn't appear that Taiwan honors foreign patents via treaty: http://www.bpmlegal.com/pctco.html http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/plt/ , but I may be wrong.
The US has done basically the same thing with US patents which have "national security" implications. In the US, the Constitutional authority for patents lies in Congress, so Congress is perfectly free to decide whether patent protection should/is offered for such things. I don't profess to know such specifics about Taiwan.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yes. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this in ST II-II.66.7. "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need." Although this would not be a "secret" taking (it's in the headlines!), the principle still replies. IF (and I stress the "if" because I have no idea what the price tag was) Roche is truly being unreasonable in their demands, and IF (ditto) the need to act now is truly extreme, then the Taiwanese government does have the right to act in violation of the patent.
An editorial in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, possibly the most authoritative source in the field, pointed out how drug companies spend far more money in marketing than they do in research. Also, drug companies often outsource the pure R&D to little-known laboratories, or buy patents from them, just to re-brand the products. I've been involved in research on levosimendan, created by Finnish Orion Corp., only to be licensed as Simdax® by Abbott Laboratories, Inc.
I figure that when push comes to shove, there's money to be made even from "open source" drugs. The so-called generic drugs, although not as profitable as your typical anti-depressant or branded statin, are a good, perfectly open source market for many companies.
Personally, I do believe in using "force" on private companies when emergencies arise. This might entail paying a forfeitary fee (kinda like compulsory licensing in music.)
Force (of money) is what drug companies use to get (partially connivent) physicians to prescribe one expensive, proprietary drug over a generic one, even if the benefits of the former are unproven.
Force of marketing (as in "ad bombing") is what drug companies use to get unwitting patients to ask their doctors for Plavix®, even though saving one life with Plavix® may cost millions of dollars which could be spent elsewhere more usefully. That is, especially in countries where resources are limited and the health care system is public, that money could save more lives if used for screening programs and promotion of healthy lifestyle, for example.
Sheer force of money is also what gets people to buy Aleve (naproxene sodium) over, well... Naproxen sodium in its cheaper, unbranded, but otherwise perfectly equivalent form!
So be it: fsck them for Greater Good. Granted, a better definition for "Greater Good" would be useful.
AFAIK Brazil is not ignoring the patents for AIDS drugs. Instead, they have negotiated a deep discount with the patent holder. IIRC this is done using the (WTO?) rule - that patents can be ignored to save human lives in an epidemic - as a really big bargaining chip. Because of this heavy bargaining chip, the AIDS drug manufacturer sells their drugs really cheaply in Brazil. They still get a profit, probably a decent one too because the drugs are affordable enough that they're actually being sold...
;)
I believe that Taiwan is doing the right thing, since the manufacturer of the bird flu drugs did not want to sell them the drugs for a price they were able/willing to pay.
I believe the rules for negotiating price are a bit different when one of the parties can write the law
Yes but Eminent Domain, at least in this country, requires just compensation.
Tell that to all the people forced out of homes or businesses for amounts of money that are far below what their property is assesed at when they refuse to sell for the government's ridiculously low offers. They just say "well, tough luck, we're taking it anyway and that's all you're getting, assessments be damned".
i am a soviet space shuttle
Gah, I can't sleep. I didn't even notice this response and it's the best among the lot.
When I said "public" I meant to include non-profits as well as "private" universities; non-indutry would be a better term - in my lab this equals about 20% of federal funding, which is probably about typical, although in cancer research is it much, much higher.
I would say that you should also include a variety of tax-breaks - often at the State level - which are given in some way theoretically conditioned on R&D, as non-industry funding. State governments, or funds that pass through state agencies in one way or another (from tuition, etc.) also pay, indirectly, a varying but sometimes significant portion of the cost for research at some state universities, the accounting is not transparent so this is much more difficult to tally. So the State share is non-zero, but hard to say how big it really is.
Industry also spends a significant amount on R&D actually located in Universities, but I'm pretty sure they include that in their filing. My lab gets hardly any industry money but my Dad gets a fair amount.
On the other hand, Columbia (my institution) in particular makes a fair amount of money from patent income, and it would be highly disingenuous of me to include that in the "non-industry" R&D total, given what I am proposing.
Finally, the federal number has not grown as much as I would have expected, I haven't actually seen these numbers for a few years, I'm pretty sure that the Federal pharma R&D was bigger when last I looked.
Anyway, thank you for the correction, but you can change "most" to "comparable amounts" in my original post it doesn't really change anything.
Your prediction is simply not holding up to recent history - my evidence here in anecdotal, but when a scientist develops a new drug, they start up a little company - so that they can sell the patent to Pfizer. For them to actually make the drug themselves depends on assumptions regarding low cost of entry which simply do not hold in this case. The result of this is that we have a sustained oligopoly which will not fix itself through competition, and is in fact becoming more entrenched.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
What is particularly unfortunate is that many drugs (including tamiflu and the superior inhaled drug relenza) were invented by relatively small biotechs. (OK, Gilead isn't small any more, but Biota is *tiny*). Small biotechs are absolutely reliant on the fees and royalties they generate through licensing their inventions to Big Pharma, who have the money to get them through the FDA approval process and marketed.
Break a patent for Roche or GSK, they'll be annoyed but hardly notice the change in cash-flow. The biotech, however, will lose its sole cash-flow life-line. Biota are collaborating with Japanese pharma Sankyo to produce a second-generation antiviral for influenza that looks like being needed once-weekly for both prophylaxis and treatment. Be a real pity to destroy promising biotech-level research like that by cutting profits at the Big Pharma end of town.
Disclaimer: Yes I work for a biotech - own shares in them too.
Because, to quote Dow (buyers of Union Carbide and inheritors of the Bhopal Disaster legacy)
And I doubt their shareholders will support you (nor will the US govt) since one of the answers to this Dow statement (by a Dow shareholder) was
Remember that we're talking about tens of thousands of deaths, still ongoing...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler