Public interest group challenges ‘unmerited’ Gilead patents
Non-profit group the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) has accused Gilead of obtaining “unmerited patents” for its hepatitis C medicine sofosbuvir.
Yesterday, October 25, I-MAK announced that it had filed the “first-ever” US challenges against six patents covering sofosbuvir at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
“If Gilead’s six core patents for sofosbuvir are ruled unmerited, US taxpayers will save $10 billion and generics can get to market 14 years faster,” said the public interest group.
According to I-MAK, there are 3.5 million people with hepatitis C in the US, and more than 85% of Americans diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C will not receive treatment this year.
Gilead uses sofosbuvir for its drugs Sovaldi, Harvoni and Epclusa.
“By reviewing evidence that the US Patent and Trademark Office never considered, I-MAK has found that sofosbuvir was developed through obvious tweaks to existing compounds and formulations commonly used in older HIV and cancer drugs.”
Tahir Amin, co-founder and co-executive director at I-MAK, said: “Unmerited patents are a root cause of high drug prices and deserve much closer scrutiny.
“Removing these unmerited patents will allow more affordable generic drugs to be introduced much sooner, saving lives and saving taxpayers billions of dollars.”
I-MAK also released a white paper today, outlining how “unmerited patents and over-patenting by the pharmaceutical industry will cause more than $55 billion in excess costs to Americans”.
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