UNU-MERIT Access 2 Knowledge Portal

At the Open Source World Conference in Málaga, Spain, Karsten Gerloff discussed the FLOSSInclude project in a session on EU-sponsored FLOSS research projects. The presentation met with lively interest from the audience, drawing questions in particular from Latin American participants.

The session was chaired by Jesus Villasante, head of unit for the Software Technologies unit in the EU Directorate General Information Society and Media (DG Infso)

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September 6, 2008

A2K3: UNU-MERIT organises “Technologies for Access” Panel

Filed under: development, education, foss, general, innovation, science — Karsten Gerloff @ 1:12 pm

UNU-MERIT’s Collaborative Creativity Group has organised a panel on “Technologies for Access” at Yale Law Schools Third Access to Knowledge Global Conference (A2K3). The conference will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 8-10. UNU-MERIT researchers Rishab Ghosh and Karsten Gerloff will be attending the event.

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July 17, 2008

Rishab Ghosh in expert panel on standards

Filed under: development, foss, ipr — Karsten Gerloff @ 6:09 pm

At a seminar organised by the South Centre in Geneva on June 30, UNU-MERIT researcher Rishab Ghosh participated in an expert panel on intellectual monopoly powers and standards.

IP-Watch reports:

Standards can be of two kinds: de facto standards created by market forces, and de jure standards created by standards-setting organisations. In both cases, the standards can include intellectual property rights.

In the de facto scenario, “the value is in the standard, not in the technology itself,” said Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, senior researcher at the United Nations University (UNU-Merit) in the Netherlands. The value comes from the fact that everybody is going to use the same technology, he said.

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November 14, 2007

KEI and UNU-MERIT Announce Award for Best Paper on Monetary Prizes to Stimulate Medical R&D

Filed under: development, general, ipr, medicine, science — Karsten Gerloff @ 12:35 pm

How can society ensure that knowledge goods, which are both costly to create and potentially non-rival in use, can be shared freely?

There is little doubt that the current approach to rewarding the development of new medicines or diagnostic devices has severe deficiencies. Patent enforced monopolies often lead to high
prices. Critics also say that this system often fails to stimulate investment in areas of public interest and priority.

The prize system provides an appealing solution by encouraging new approaches to this thorny issue. If the incentive for innovation can be divorced from the product’s consumer price, then knowledge
goods — including the R&D for a new medicine — can be placed in the public domain immediately, so that competition among suppliersleads to low prices and greater access to new medical inventions.

Prizes can be implemented in many different ways. For donors and governments in particular, prizes might offer an alternative to marketing monopolies as the reward for successful investments in R&D.

Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and UNU-MERIT are calling for papers on the use of monetary prizes as an alternative mechanism to stimulate private investments in R&D.

Participation is open to anyone. Winners will be selected by a jury of high-profile experts. The deadline for contributions is February 15, 2008. Papers should be between four and 20 pages, and must be submitted under a licence allowing unlimited distribution, such as an appropriate Creative Commons licence.

Awards:

Winning paper: EUR 1500.
Two runners-up: EUR 500.-
The three top-ranked papers will be published in the Knowledge Ecology Studies journal.

Successful papers will deal with one or more of the following questions:

1. Relation to exclusive rights of a patent: Should prizes beconsidered as a voluntary or non-voluntary alternative to the exclusive rights now associated with the patent system, or as acomplementary reward?

2. Valuation: How does one determine the size of prizes?

3. Push vs. pull: Where to use research grants (”push”), where to prefer prizes (”pull”) to finance drug development?

4. Sustainable financing: Where should the prize money come from, and will the prospect of prizes be credible?

5. Follow-on innovation: How will prizes deal with the need for incentives for follow-on innovation?

6. Transition: How can the transition from the current monopoly-based system be organized?

For questions and submissions, please send email to Malini Aisola and Karsten Gerloff <prizeprize@merit.unu.edu>. More information will soon be available at ccp.merit.unu.edu/prizeprize.

KEI and UNU-MERIT are looking forward to your contributions.

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December 3, 2006

Access to essential medicines

Filed under: development, general, ipr, medicine — philipp @ 1:37 pm

Jamie Love’s letter to the World Health Organisation asking for an overhaul of the Essential Medicines List (EDL). He points out that using cost as a determinant for inclusion in the list is a problemetic way to determine if a medicine is “essential”. It turns out that only 14 (12 on the core list and 2 on the complimentary list) of the 312 medicines on the list are protected by patents that prevent production of cheaper generic versions. While some argue that this indicates that patents are in fact not preventing the poor from accessing “essential medicines”, a closer look reveals that the opposite is the case. Since price is one factor that determines if a medicine is included in the list, it is the premium that consumers pay for patented medicines that keeps them out of the list – regardless if they are “essential” from a health perspective or not. Not a single patent protected anti-cancer drug made it onto the core list – not essential enough?

Since developing countries enjoy some flexibility under the current TRIPs regime to address their urgent health-care needs, the WHO would be well advised to compile a list of truly “essential” medicines, which could then be procured affordably through the use of compulsory licensing and generic substitutes – at a much lower cost.

Full letter is at the cptech.org website.

The intent of the Essential Medicines List (EDL) is to present “a list of minimum medicine needs for a basic health care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost-effective medicines for priority conditions,” where priority diseases themselves are identified in part on the basis of the potential for cost-effective treatment. Given that countries are free to use various means, such as compulsory licenses, to increase access to medical products that can improve the public health, it is appropriate to reassess the role that cost – especially as reflected under current patent medicine pricing regimes – plays in this evaluation.

…

The existence of a WHO “Essential Medicines List” which clearly does not contain many truly essential medicines may be confusing for public health officials and others and provide rhetorical fodder to those who oppose intellectual property flexibilities for health.

...

Patented medicines currently available only at prohibitive prices may nonetheless offer the “potential for cost-effective treatment” as countries have the opportunity to legally produce or import generic
versions. More critical to the evaluation of cost effectiveness under the emerging system is the true marginal cost of production, which bears little or no relationship to the market price in developed countries.

We believe that it is more appropriate that the Essential Medicines List reflect the opportunity that many countries have to obtain currently patented drugs at generic prices by assessing cost-effectiveness not only on the basis of current market prices, but also on the basis of potential generic prices if countries were to avail themselves of their right to exercise TRIPS flexibilities, including the granting of compulsory licenses. Developing countries in particular might stand to benefit from a model WHO Essential Medicines List that does not exclude essential patented medicines by ignoring the potential that those drugs could be obtained more cheaply. A welcome side-effect of this change would be an “Essential Medicines List" that more fully reflects the range of truly essential medicines, where essential reflects both the need for treatments and the costs of meeting those needs unburdened by patent rents.

...

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October 24, 2006

Only limited role for intellectual monopolies in development

Filed under: development, ipr — Karsten Gerloff @ 5:40 pm

IP-Watch in September carried an interview with Padmashree Gehl Sampath, a researcher at UNU-MERIT. Based on research conducted into the pharmaceutical industries of a number of developing countries, she points out that innovation and development can and do thrive in the absence of strict copyright and patent regimes.

Though such monopolies on ideas can have a role in a country’s innovation policy, the focus is “selective”.

Gehl Sampath said that in general, “I do not think IP is very important for development.” Intellectual property is only of use to nations once they reach a particular state of development, she said, as history has shown. Even Switzerland did not have a strong IP law until recently, she said.

According to this researcher, developing countries may suffer from lack of innovation for reasons that have little to do with the absence of a strict regime of intellectual monopoly powers:

Developing countries tend to suffer from institutional failures, such as the inability to change as quickly as markets demand, provide instruction in key paths, and other administrative inefficiencies. Absence of infrastructure is a key issue for developing countries as well, she said.

Successful innovation policies also have to take into account a host of other factors, such as R&D subsidies, tax exemptions and promotions for scientists.

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