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April 2007
The WSJ has a great editorial today on the issue of Thailand issuing compulsory licenses on pharmaceuticals, focusing on Abbott's Kaletra.
But in an overall good editorial, the Journal criticizes Abbott for capitulating to Thailand and lowering their prices, instead of playing hardball, and pulling out ("withdraw from an offending country's market").
I've already blogged on this. Abbott was/is in a no-win situation in Thailand, and in my opinion made the right choice between capitulating on prices or giving Thailand every reason to proceed with compulsory licensing.
Furthermore, the Journal underestimates the pressure on pharmaceutical companies in the international community, and particularly in relation to the WHO. Read More...
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The USTR's Special 301 report is out, and Thailand has rightly been elevated to the Priority Watch List.
That's a good thing, and it's at least a partial answer to the question I posed in a recent blog entry: "Where's the U.S. government" in relation to the issue of Thailand issuing compulsory licenses against a slate of popular and important pharmaceuticals. Read More...
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I have an op/ed this morning in The Hill entitled "First, do no harm to the intellectual property system." It's a big week for IP issues, what with World Intellectual Property Day on Thursday, several patent reform hearings scheduled on the Hill, and the Health Minister of Thailand visiting DC on the heels of his theft of a portfolio of pharmaceutical patents.
I have a balanced relationship with the grocery store. My needs and the needs of the grocery store are not mutually exclusive. I go into the store, and I give them money in exchange for an equivalent amount of goods. My needs are balanced against the needs of the store, and we’re both happy.
What makes this possible? How can my need for groceries and the store’s need for revenue be balanced? Read More...
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"The Ultimate Resource," a 1-hour documentary produced by the same people who produced "The Power of Choice," is being broadcast Tuesday night in high definition on HDNET.
The program will feature such well-known freedom thinkers as Johan Norberg and Hernando de Soto.
Free market thinkers in high def. What could be better than that? Read More...
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The latest news in the game of chicken between the military dictatorship in Thailand and U.S. pharmaceutical company Abbott over access to Abbott's AIDS drugs is that Abbott has decided to offer the most improved version of it's critical drug Kaletra to Thailand at a discounted rate if the Thai government will forgo its plan to issue a compulsory license. It's covered by an article in today's Wall Street Journal, which is also commented on at the WSJ's Health Blog.
Thailand, of course, is ruled by a military junta. Read More...
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When unexpectedly huge claims hit property owners and insurers--as happened in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season--who should pick up the tab, or bear the loss? Florida Gov. Charlie Crist—subject of a Wall Street Journal editorial highlighting his aggressive intervention in his state’s insurance markets-- thinks it's the responsibility of all of us, as taxpayers, and supports legislation to create a national catastrophe claims fund to compensate claimants who have inadequate coverage, or whose claims are in dispute with their insurance company. Ed Lazear, President Bush's chief economic advisor, disagrees--Lazear thinks a new, national catastrophic insurance fund will just crowd out private-market insurance, and create endless fiscal headaches for years to come.
From an equity standpoint, both sides have legitimate arguments. Read More...
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The minute you step onto my property uninvited, you are trespassing. Period, end-of-story.
However, because there are any number of reasonable and good and virtuous reasons for you to do so, such as to tell me my house is on fire or that my trash can has blown over in a windstorm, the law enumerates a number of specific exceptions to trespass, and also outlines principles to guide us in such matters.
But these are exceptions to the rule. The rule is still the right of the property owner to exclude trespass.
Copyright is the same. The minute you copy anything covered by copyright, you have infringed. Period, end-of-story.
But because there are several reasonable reasons for doing so, copyright law also gives us principles and standards for determining which infringements are "okay." These exceptions and standards are called "fair use."
But any of these specific exemptions are the exception, not the rule. Read More...
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IPI is gearing up for World IP Day on April 26th, and so is China.
On Saturday morning, authorities across the country oversaw the destruction of more than 42 million smuggled, pirated or simply illegal books, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, software and other electronic media in a bid to crack down on counterfeiters.
Coordinated events were held in 31 provinces and regions, including Beijing, Guangdong, Tianjin and Guangxi, sources with the General Administration of Press and Publication said.
Read More...
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There is an article in today's The Independent (UK) blaming pharmaceutical companies for the severe problem of counterfeit drugs.
The article does a decent job of describing the damage being done by counterfeit drugs, which is truly a more significant problem than is appreciated by most of us in the developing world. But unfortunately, the article takes the easy way out and knee-jerk criticizes the pharmaceutical industry, rather than really describing the factors that contribute to widespread counterfeiting in the developing world.
* Counterfeit medicines are swamping unregulated markets in developing nations with unknown and sometimes fatal results. Not only are thousands dying needlessly, but patients are also becoming immune to the effects of the real thing. Counterfeit drugs occasionally contain small doses of the active ingredient - enough to induce resistance
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In my work on intellectual property I often come across the assumption that IP is something that rich countries use as a battering ram against the developing world. People who make this argument are constantly arguing for weakening IP protection, and claim that IP protection is a barrier against development. IP is not a tool of development, they claim.
Which is nuts.
That's why I've been featuring articles from developing countries about how piracy is hurting creators in developing countries.
Today's guest is Senegal, courtesy of an article in the Financial Times.
Read More...
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I strongly believe (and the evidence strongly demonstrates) that the best way to address economic problems is through markets. And since property rights are a prerequisite for functioning markets, my bias has always been that it's almost always the best thing to do attach a property right to something, and to create a market for it.
I'm thus a strong advocate of IP rights, and even of creating new IP rights and extending existing ones.
So I’ve been accused in the past of being an “IP maximalist,” and I suppose that’s pretty much true.
However, I’ve finally found a form of intellectual property that I can’t support.
In a March 14th column in The Wall Street Journal, Tom Herman tells us about the controversy over patents granted to tax-planning strategies.
Read More...
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My friend Alec Van Gelder from the International Policy Network in London has a very good piece in today's Wall Street Journal on efforts by the E.U. to impose net neutrality regulations on European broadband providers.
(For print readers, it's in the Business Europe section.)
In the U.S., we realized that forcing network builders and owners to turn their property over to the "commons" and essentially treating it as publically owned infrastructure was wrong and counterproductive, and was stifling the rollout of broadband. And we've changed our policies in the last few years, resulting in a dramatic increase in the construction and extension of new broadband networks.
But the E.U. seems to be heading in the opposite direction:
The EU's attitude to investment and innovation in telecoms is revealed in its current dispute with Deutsche Telekom over the former monopoly's right to control new infrastructure of its own. Read More...
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There is a new move afoot to change the very complicated and counterproductive way property and casualty insurance regulation is done in the United States.
In the last Congress, U.S. Senators John Sununu (R-NH) and Tim Johnson (D-SD) introduced a bill that would allow life and property/casualty insurers to choose federal rather than state-by-state charter under an "optional federal charter" system.
The optional federal charter, one possible reform candidate for the modernization of insurance regulation, is patterned after banking regulation, also a dual system where banks can be chartered either on a state or a federal basis.
It's thought by many that reform of insurance industry regulation is long overdue. Obviously the Hurricane Katrina disaster drew a lot of attention to the shortcomings of our insurance system, but nothing much was done as a result except to bash insurance companies and call for even more regulation. Read More...
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I was on a flight the other night from Washington Reagan back to Dallas. There were several servicemen in uniform on the flight, as is almost always the case.
Just before we reached the gate, as the flight attendant was going through her final few comments, she finished by saying something like "And we'd like to thank our servicemen, and want to let them know that we appreciate everything they are doing for our country."
The passengers broke out in spontaneous applause.
Polling data suggest that a large number of passengers on the plane, perhaps even a majority, would not characterize themselves as supporters of the operations in Iraq. Yet, they applauded the servicemen.
This is typical of Americans. They may not support a particular military operation, but they support their men in uniform.
Read More...
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Author: Tom Giovanetti || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA