5 October 2016Americas

LSIPR 50 2016: Chunli Bai and Kyle Bass

Name: Chunli Bai

Organisation: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Position: President

Chunli Bai is the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences—the national academy for natural sciences in China.

Bai’s research focuses on the structure and properties of polymer catalysts, X-ray crystallography of organic compounds, molecular mechanics, and extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS) research on electro-conducting polymers.

"During his time as president, Bai has encouraged international scientific cooperation."

The academy, founded in 1955, comprises three major parts—a research and development network, a traditional merit-based academic society and a system of higher education.

As well as his work at the academy he was also a founding director of the National Centre for Science and Technology in China. He was made vice-president of the academy in 1996 and became president in 2011.

During his time as president, Bai has encouraged international scientific cooperation. His aim is to boost the quality and application of science that originates in China.

In 2010, he was awarded a UNESCO medal for “contributions to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies”.

In 2004, Bai served as the founding chairperson for the special committee on nanotechnology and a year later on the national nanotechnology standardisation committee. The committee is aimed at strengthening the metrological capabilities of the research facilities in public institutions as well as manufacturing sectors that are engaged in nanotechnologies.

Name: Kyle Bass

Organisation: The Coalition for Affordable Drugs

Position: Owner

Depending on your perspective, Kyle Bass is a fighter for more affordable life-saving drugs or an opportunistic financier.

It’s difficult to keep count of the number of inter partes review (IPR) petitions Bass and the Coalition for Affordable Drugs have filed against patents owned by some of the biggest biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in the world. So far, around half have been instituted and the other half rejected.

Such a ratio of success might show that Bass is targeting the right patents and using the forum for its intended purpose: to knock out weak patents. Bass contends that bad patents maintain an artificially high price of life-saving drugs.

It’s a noble narrative that he presents and it puts him in the same boat as US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who has long made tackling high prices of drugs in the US a centre of his campaign, as well as non-profit group the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (IMAK).

"Bass contends that bad patents maintain an artificially high price of life-saving drugs."

Neither Sanders nor the IMAK has been viewed as negatively as Bass. For some, Bass’s mission has the ulterior motive of ‘shorting’ the stock of pharma and biotech companies. Last year, Celgene requested that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) sanction Bass for filing abusive IPRs. In its motion, it explicitly accused Bass of using the IPR to short its stock. However, Celgene’s motion collapsed because the PTAB said it only rules on legal arguments.

Bass’s interventions have sparked wider debates about the patent system and the role of the PTAB. His contribution to the debate on life-saving drug patents has been enormous, even if controversial, and will continue to inspire further discussion on how the IP system can facilitate the development of important medicines.