Word: patents
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...weeks ago, San Jose-based TiVo Inc. won the patent for Personal Video Recording. Wall Street approved and the stock shot up 72% in a day. That might have been because TiVo could now theoretically ask Microsoft, owners of Ultimate TV, and Philips, owners of Replay TV, to take out licenses. Or it may just be because the system was formally described in the patent as "multimedia timewarping." C'mon, how cool is that...
...wonder drugs in today's medical arsenal, the heartburn treatment Prilosec has long been the most successful. The stomach soother reaped an astonishing $6.2 billion in sales last year to make it the best-selling prescription drug ever--a title Prilosec stands to lose when its patent expires in October. But if the drug's maker, British firm AstraZeneca, behaves like many of its counterparts in the industry, it won't easily relinquish its monopoly. Indeed, sources confirmed to TIME that the Federal Trade Commission has quietly launched an investigation into whether AstraZeneca illegally blocked generic competition to protect...
South Africa's 4.7 million HIV sufferers just got a double whammy of bad news. On Monday, their government revealed that it although it has won the right to import cheap copies of patent-protected AIDS drugs, it has no intention of actually buying and supplying those treatments through the public health system on which its impoverished citizenry depends. And that came on top of last week's announcement that the Bush administration will donate $200 million to a global fund to fight the AIDS pandemic in the developing world. The reason the latter is bad news is that...
...Generic copies of the anti-retroviral "cocktail" therapies essential to staying the onset of full-blown AIDS can be acquired on the world market for as little as $250 a year per patient, as compared with a patent-protected price tag in the U.S. of $10,000 a year. But in a country with 4.7 million mostly deeply impoverished HIV patients, even the discounted drugs would require the government to lay out $1.2 billion a year - and to put in place the infrastructure to ensure the proper diagnosis and usage and create a healthy environment to protect those patients from...
...SOUTH AFRICA Firms Agree to Cheaper Anti-AIDS Drugs The pharmaceutical industry abandoned its lawsuit against South Africa, opening the way for the country to import cheaper anti-AIDS drugs and other patented medicines. Giving in to a groundswell of opposition in a country where an estimated 4.7 million people are HIV positive, the 39 drug companies gave up the three-year patent protection battle. Human rights groups and AIDS activists considered the case a landmark in their efforts to obtain medication for millions in developing countries...