Word: patentable
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University, criticized the way companies can patent genes even without a clear understanding of their function...
...buzz surrounding Ginger began in December, after Kamen's firm, DEKA Research and Development of Manchester, N.H., filed a patent request with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The secret invention generated tremendous speculation...
...riding on it. AIDS activists are painting the trial as a moment of truth in a clash between the wretched of the earth and corporate behemoths looking to grow larger still by profiteering from human misfortune. Drug companies are seeing it as a basic challenge to the principle of patent and profit, which they see as essential to their industry's capacity to develop new drugs capable of saving lives...
...brought these drugs within reach of ordinary Africans. In fact, the people who make the drugs--American- and European-owned multinational pharmaceutical corporations--and their home governments, notably Washington, have worked hard to keep prices up by limiting exports to the Third World and vigorously enforcing patent rights. They argue that drug firms legitimately need the profits to finance research on new wonder drugs. They say it's not wise to offer cheap AIDS drugs without a proper medical infrastructure--that deadly, drug-resistant strains would emerge. But at what point does the human benefit to desperate, destitute countries outweigh...
During the tug of war so far, the pharmaceuticals and Western governments have prevailed. But increasingly, poor countries and AIDS advocates are finding ways to shift the balance. India and Brazil have vigorously exploited a time lag until international patent rules apply to them, manufacturing copies of AIDS drugs and selling them at deeply discounted prices. The practice opens the door for other countries to follow suit by taking advantage of a legal loophole in global-trade rules called compulsory licensing. In effect, it lets countries breach patents during national emergencies to manufacture generic versions of AIDS drugs...