Brazil Overrides Merck Patent on AIDS Drug - New York Times

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May 5, 2007
WORLD BRIEFING | AMERICAS

Brazil Overrides Merck Patent on AIDS Drug

By CELIA W. DUGGER

The government, whose spending on AIDS drugs has skyrocketed as more patients have needed costly, patented medicines, overrode the patent held by the pharmaceutical company Merck on the antiretroviral drug efavirenz. The cost of Mercks drugs has been $580 annually per patient. Brazil said the company had offered a 30 percent discount, but the government opted instead to buy the generic version from India for less than $170. For years, Brazil has considered exercising its rights under international trade rules to make or import generic versions of patented AIDS drugs, but has until now backed away, fearing trade retaliation from the United States. For more than a decade, Brazil has provided universal free access to drug treatment for people with AIDS. Almost one in four patients in Brazil are now taking efavirenz. With the new price,

Roche bows to Brazil on Aids drug | World news | The Guardian

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Brazil estimates that it will save $237 million on efavirenz by 2012 when the patent expires. Thailand, which also has an ambitious AIDS treatment program, overrode Mercks patent on the same drug in November.

Brazil Will Defy Patent on AIDS Drug Made by Roche - The New York Times
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Roche bows to Brazil on Aids drug

Special report: Aids
Alex Bellos in Rio de Janeiro The Guardian, Saturday 1 September 2001 11.31 BST
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August 23, 2001

Brazil Will Defy Patent on AIDS Drug Made by Roche

By JENNIFER L. RICH with MELODY PETERSEN

SO PAULO, Brazil, Aug. 22 After months of negotiations on price cuts ended in deadlock, Brazil said today that it would break the patent on an AIDS drug produced by the Swiss drug giant Roche. The nation's health minister, Jose Serra, said he had begun the process of issuing a license to produce nelfinavir, marketed by Roche under the name Viracept. If Brazil goes through with its threat to issue what is often called a compulsory license, it would be the first time that the government of a poor country has decided to allow generic copies of a brand-name drug to be made without the permission of the company that owns the patent. Viracept is one of the 12 drugs used in the so-called drug cocktail to treat AIDS. The Health Ministry said that the government bought 82 million units of nelfinavir a year at a cost of $88 million. That accounts for 28 percent of what the government spends on the AIDS program in a year. In 2000, the Brazilian government spent $303 million in providing the AIDS cocktail to about 100,000 patients. Roche had offered this year to cut the price of nelfinavir by 13 percent, but Brazil rejected that proposal as too low, and the two sides had been negotiating. Mr. Serra said that talks broke off about two weeks ago. Mr. Serra said that the government invoked an article in the Constitution that allows for the breaking of a patent in cases of abusive prices. ''It's ridiculous that one of the 12 drugs in the cocktail would account for more than 25 percent of the cost,'' Mr. Serra said. ''We spend more on that one drug than on all of the transplants performed in Brazil each year.'' The government said that domestic production of the drug would save the government 40 percent, a savings of $35 million a year. Spokesmen for Roche could not be reached for comment. Earlier this year, the United States filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about a different article of the Brazilian Constitution that allows for the breaking of patents in cases where a medication is not produced domestically. It later dropped the complaint. Through the state-owned laboratory Far-Manguinhos, Brazil plans to begin offering the generic drug to patients by February 2002. The big drug companies have fought hard to avoid a situation like the one with Roche. In March, for instance, Merck & Company reduced the price on two other drugs in the AIDS cocktail, efavirenz and indinavir, by about 60 percent, saving the government about $38 million this year.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche caved in to pressure from Brazil yesterday and announced that it would reduce the price of an anti-Aids drug by 40%. The Brazilian health secretary, Jose Serra, called it a victory for developing countries against the unfair pricing of the drug multinationals. Roche said it would sell nelfinavir at the price demanded by Brazil. The decision came a week after Brazil aggressively raised the stakes in the long-running prices battle by authorising its own laboratories to make much cheaper generic copies of nelfinavir. "Pharmaceutical companies have to realise that pricing should be different for developing countries - Our resources are tight," Mr Serra said. "This is a victory for sick people. Brazil is strengthened by the decision, because it is working in the consumer's interest." The Brazilian laboratory which developed a generic http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/world/americas/05briefs-brazil.html?sq=brazil ...copy of nelfinavir will continue 27/04/2010 researching the product, although its plans for production have been suspended. A statement from Roche headquarters in Basel said the agreement would secure "the

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Defensive Drug Industry: Fueling Clash Over Patents

By ANDREW POLLACK Published: April 20, 2001

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The big pharmaceutical companies march to the beat of a steady chant -- that patent protection for drugs is essential for innovation. At the urging of the drug companies, the United States government has pressed many nations to honor patents on medications. But now, it seems, the industry may have overplayed its hand. Drug patents are under attack, blamed for high AIDS drug prices that deny life-saving therapy to millions of people in developing countries. And some analysts say the industry itself fueled the backlash by staunchly defending its intellectual property in the face of a pandemic that could claim more lives than the Black Death of the Middle Ages.

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The latest clash over patents on AIDS drugs came to a boil in South Africa yesterday, when 39 drug companies dropped a suit trying to block a law the companies asserted would make it too easy for the government to abrogate their patents. The debate has erupted in other countries as well. Brazil has threatened to grant licenses to local manufacturers on patents for AIDS drugs held by Merck and Hoffman-La Roche. In Thailand, AIDS patients and activists are planning a legal challenge to the validity of a Bristol-Myers Squibb patent on an AIDS drug. The uproar over AIDS drugs is threatening moves toward more globalization, eight years after most nations approved the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or Trips, which commits them to enforce drug patents. Activists are campaigning against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, saying the United States wants more patent protections. ''The Trips agreement was probably the greatest political economic achievement that the pharmaceutical industry ever had,'' said Jim Keon, president of a trade group representing generic drug companies in Canada. ''Now it's coming home to roost, though. Can the world afford it? Is it ethical?'' Even some supporters of patents are pulling back somewhat. Washington says it will no
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