August 5, 2008
Contact: Sam Houshower
Phone: 415.686.8520
Email: houshower [at] berkeley [dot] edu

For Immediate Release

UAEM Urges Universities to Support UNITAID Patent Pool

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) applauds the decision of the UNITAID Executive Board to move toward establishing a patent pool for medicines to provide patients in low and middle income countries with increased access to more appropriate and affordable medicines.

“UNITAID has been innovative since its inception,” said Ethan Guillen, UAEM’s Executive Director. “But with this decision, UNITAID steps forward as a visionary leader in the global fight against diseases affecting the poor. UAEM looks forward to the pool’s establishment and urges universities to explore integrating the UNITAID patent pool into their socially responsible licensing programs to multiply the impact of their discoveries.”

UNITAID, which was created in 2006 as an international drug purchase facility funded by a tax on air travel by the governments of France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and the UK has launched a Task Force to create working documents for the pool, which could be online as early as early 2009 with an initial focus on pediatric anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and new combination therapies.

International efforts have been successful in bringing down the cost of first-line ARVs to under USD 100 per year per patient, making possible effective treatment programs in many low and middle income countries. Second-line ARVs, however, are generally on-patent and very expensive even in developing countries. A patent pool promises to provide broad access to second-line drugs in developing countries at affordable prices while maintaining royalties for patent owners.
A patent pool can contain the entire set of intellectual property necessary to produce particular products and thus provide a one-stop shop for companies producing pharmaceuticals for low-income countries and global health buyers. Beyond price competition, a patent pool’s straightforward licensing arrangement and agreements on data exclusivity offer the promise of rapid innovation and increased flexibility in formulating and improving pharmaceuticals to meet the specific needs of low income populations.

“Success of the UNITAID pool will depend on the readiness of patent-holders to contribute licenses,” said Sarah Sorscher, a student of law and public health at Harvard University. “Universities as important patent-holding institutions have a major role to play in ensuring UNITAID’s success.”

Universities can act today to make three very important contributions to the pool. First, universities can endorse the UNITAID patent pool in principle and as one vehicle for humanitarian licensing. Second, universities can enter into dialogue with their licensees to facilitate issuance of geographically limited, field of use licenses to the pool for production of on-patent ARVs and other essential technologies developed in university labs. Third, universities can make a forward-looking commitment to place a reservation on future licensing agreements to enable the university to issue an appropriate field of use license to the UNITAID patent pool.

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About UAEM

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a coalition of students at nearly 40 top research institutions across the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. UAEM’s mission is to ensure that people in developing countries have access to medicines developed in universities and that university medical research addresses to the needs of the majority of the world’s population.

As an organization which values innovation, we work to empower students to find new ways to improve access to health throughout the world.