EU on Pharma Antitrust

Big news from Europe on DG Comp action re the Pharma sector:

According to IP Watch:

Pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the intellectual property rights system and are “actively trying to delay the entry of generic medicines onto their markets,” a top EU official said of an EU inquiry into the pharmaceutical sector released Wednesday. As a result, there has been a decline in the number of innovative medicines getting to the market, it says.

Also, excellent coverage at IPKat here.

Meanwhile, Canada's Competition Bureau is busy working on the menace of the Nigerian Letter Scam. Hopefully, they are also doing other things in IP - but there's little sign of it, other than holding an invitation only symposium that resulted in a recently published book that I will comment on in due course.

HK

Lord Justice Jacob on Patent Law and the Pied Piper

In the honourable tradition of expert British Judges who speak their mind when helpful on public policy issues, Lord Justice Jacob - who had considerable expertise and experience in patent and trade-mark law before his appointment to the High Court and Court of Appeal - has delivered a public paper on patent policy on November 29, 2008 entitled:

Patents and Pharmaceuticals - a Paper given on 29th November
at the Presentation of the Directorate-General of Competition's
Preliminary Report of the Pharma-sector inquiry

The paper is available here. The video of his presentation is here.

Follow the links to see the connection with the Pied Piper story.

This is an important, interesting and frank paper and serves to illustrate the usefulness of appointing expert and experienced judges and hearing from them on important policy issues outside of their rulings on actual cases.

Hat tip to the IPKat.

HK