Tahir Amin Profile picture
Jul 20, 2019 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
"America's patent system should reward innovation, not lawyering." Absolutely. But the elephant in the room that urgently needs tackling to solve this problem is "what is innovation" when it comes to deserving a patent under the patent system? bit.ly/2O41qvL
I keep hearing in discussions on how to tackle the #overpatenting/ patent abuse problem that "patents should only be granted for "real and meaningful innovation". What does that even mean?
I feel sometimes that we publicly dare not get into the weeds in case we sound "anti-innovation" or "progress" and #pharma won't invest in new medicines if we challenge the meaning too much. It's as if "innovation" is some religion and we walk on egg shells when criticising it.
If we are to get anywhere is changing how #pharma (and other industries) abuse the patent system that is leading to out of control drug prices that are killing people, we need to answer this question. Some thoughts for starters, but by no means definitive:
1. This may sound like semantics, but for the purpose of the patent system we need to go back to distinguishing invention from innovation. Strictly two very different concepts that would likely yield different outcomes in patenting rates because innovation is a much lower bar.
Example: one might "innovate" to bring a useful drug to market but has not "invented" any new science to achieve that result. Is the re-application of the known science "inventive" or is it "innovation"?Does it deserve the same 20 years as compared to completely new science?
2 Does investment of large sums of money to bring a "new" product to market mean it's inventive? #Pharma uses this argument all the time, even if the science behind the "new" product is recycled science/knowledge. Labour/time/$ does not always = invention and deserve a patent.
3 Is it an invention to take an existing compound/molecule, the properties of which were already known in terms of the potential indications it can treat, run some some trials and find a 2nd/3rd etc use and then launch various new products? Does each "new" product deserve 20 yrs?
And for those who argue/worry that not granting patents for every "innovation" would kill R&D/stop new drug development such that we shouldn't change anything, then you've just highlighted we have a serious problem that needs fixing.
Perhaps "innovations" should have some other reward outside of patents, just not 20 years over and over again for the re-application of tried/tested knowledge. Otherwise the patent abuses, #overpatenting and "innovative" lawyering will continue and prices will keep increasing.

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More from @realtahiramin

Dec 21, 2021
Another year of Covid. Another season without vaccine equity. Omicron, & whatever comes next, are the utterly predictable results of a lethal brew of racist/colonial structures and market-driven global health.

A year-in-review thread 🧵 (1/21):
In Nov 2020, before vaccines were even publicly available, the free market zealots at @WSJopinion were freaking out about countries in the Global South stealing IP rights for technologies that were supposedly too complex for them to make.
wsj.com/articles/a-glo…
It was an early attempt to set the tone.

@WSJ's neocolonial economics and racist industry talking points about global manufacturing capabilities needed debunking, which I did in this thread over a year ago. How do you feel now @WSJ?
Read 21 tweets
Nov 6, 2021
Next time you are thinking of using the word "innovation" in relation to the pharmaceutical industry or the patent system, or are involved in a debate about how reforming the patent system or negotiating drug prices will harm "innovation", think of this:
And this:
Read 17 tweets
May 10, 2021
Moderna's CEO on why he doesn't think waiving IP will increase mRNA vaccine supply: “If someone wants to start from scratch, they would have to figure out how to make mRNA, which is not in our patents.”

Right there, in black and white, are a few very important things. (1/10)
1. It confirms that Moderna’s statement in Oct 2020 about waiving patents was just PR stunt.

They deliberately left out the tech transfer part, and are saying here that the patents they would release wouldn’t be helpful anyways.
2. #TRIPsWaiver is only a prerequisite for expanding global manufacturing capacity.

It'll all come down to the details, and w/out tremendous pressure/scrutiny from the movement that made this happen in the first place those negotiations will ensure nothing substantive is done.
Read 10 tweets
May 10, 2021
Talking of candour, the following few sentences in this letter that caught my attention in particular:

“The proposed waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, threatens to disrupt the flow of raw materials.”
“It will unleash a scramble for the critical inputs we require in order to make a safe and effective vaccine.”
“Entities with little or no experience in manufacturing vaccines are likely to chase the very raw materials we require to scale our production, putting the safety and security of all at risk.”
Read 4 tweets
Nov 23, 2020
This @WSJ Editorial Board piece, which has the jingoism of Rudyard Kipling's writings, deserves a fuller response. But in this thread I'm going to focus on one particular sentence in the opinion to help enlighten the thinking of our 'friends' at the @WSJ. on.wsj.com/2IZPlFC
That sentence is:

"It’s not clear developing countries even have the ability to manufacture large-scale, complex technologies like Moderna’s mRNA vaccine or Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibody cocktail—let alone distribute them."
Putting aside the @WSJ's superiority complex, it's worth looking at some examples in the past where similar statements made by those in the western hemisphere about the scientific/technological abilities of countries in the global south have been proven wrong.
Read 13 tweets
Sep 30, 2020
Despite what the CEO of Celgene/BMS has said in this hearing, it's important to note that even though Natco will enter with a generic version of Revlimid in 2022 it will be a very restricted amount.
The settlement between Natco/Celgene prevents Natco from fully coming to market until 2026. Other generics are still in litigation with Celgene BMS because of all the "important patent innovations" that Celegene piled up.
One of those "important innovations" is a patent on the crystalline form of lenalidomide which expires in 2027. A graduate student in organic chemistry would know how to get a crystalline form of a compound because it's just so obvious.
Read 4 tweets

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