Congratulations to the Medicines Patent Pool and
Gilead Sciences for breaking new ground in using voluntary licensing agreements
as a tool to improve access to medicines for people in developing
countries.
The
Medicines Patent Pool was established by the innovative global health financing
initiative UNITAID in 2010 to stimulate innovation and improve access to HIV
medicines. The Patent Pool works to achieve these goals by facilitating the
sharing of intellectual property by patent holders through the negotiation of
voluntary licenses. Last September, the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) became the first entity to share patents with the
Patent Pool. In May, President Obama joined
other leaders of the G8 in affirming support for the Patent Pool and
encouraging the voluntary participation of additional patent owners—public and
private.
This
morning, the Medicines Patent Pool and Gilead announced an agreement allowing
the Pool to grant licenses to generic drug manufacturers for several Gilead
products relevant to HIV and Hepatitis B treatment. This agreement makes Gilead
the first pharmaceutical company to license technology into the Patent
Pool. Also notable is the fact that Gilead is licensing intellectual
property related to products still in clinical development—which means that
manufacturers can plan early for production, potentially accelerating
availability in developing countries.
The new
agreement covers licenses for critical HIV treatments (tenofovir and
emtricitabine), promising HIV treatments in the late-stages of clinical
development (cobicistat and elvitegravir), and the combination of these
products in a single pill known as the “Quad.” Tenofovir is also licensed to
the Patent Pool for use against Hepatitis B – a serious illness in the
developing world that the World Health Organization estimates kills 600,000
people a year.
NIH and
Gilead are the first licensors to join the Pool. We hope additional
public and private patent holders will explore voluntary licenses with the
Medicines Patent Pool as one of many innovative ways to help improve the
availability of medicines in developing countries.
