Tahir Amin Profile picture
Oct 10, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
"After 10 years under the BPCIA, patents, in many cases scores of patents per product, are providing originators with years of additional exclusivity."bit.ly/2pZxl4N
"Every FDA-approved biosimilar has faced a patent challenge, and on average at least 80 patents have been either asserted or disclosed as potentially covering the biosimilar."
"Biologics originators successfully argued that they required longer [marketing] exclusivity without competition from follow-on products because patents covering the originators’ products would not pose the same barriers to entry that patents provide for small molecule drugs."
"Almost 10 years after enactment of the BPCIA, it is clear that originators’ concerns were overstated. Patent thickets remain an important obstacle to launching follow-on biologics and help explain why such launches in the U.S. lag behind those in Europe."
This article highlights what many of us already knew.#Pharma and #Biotech's reasoning for longer marketing exclusivity does not hold up. And that's why Canada, Mexico and Congress should not pass the USMCA or any future trade agreement demanding longer marketing exclusivity.
It also highlights that #overpatenting by #Pharma and #Biotech is THE problem and is preventing earlier competition. Do we have the courage to take this problem on in a way that will have real and meaningful impact that benefits the public - not the companies?

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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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