19 November 2019GenericsRory O'Neill

Russian government approves compulsory drug licensing bill

The Russian government has endorsed legislation that would allow it to employ compulsory drug licensing in emergencies.

The new law would allow the government to limit IP rights in the “public interest”, the country’s  Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said in a statement last Thursday, November 14.

FAS head Igor Artemiev said the new law would allow the government to tackle monopolies, high drug prices, and companies who refuse to supply vital medicines.

The proposed law will now go to the State Duma, the country’s parliament, for approval.

Under the law, the Russian government could employ compulsory medicine licensing in the interests of defence, national security, and where there are “threats to the life and health of the population”.

According to a translated statement on the FAS website, the government would be able to assign production of “vital and essential foreign drugs” to Russian manufacturers in these scenarios, or if a foreign company “refuses to supply such drugs to Russia”.

Compulsory licensing could also be employed in the case of epidemics or where one company owns exclusive rights on a drug needed to fight against “serious disease”. In these scenarios, patent owners would be compensated for the mandatory licence.

Mandatory licensing has featured prominently in international debate over high drug prices as of late.

In September, leader of the UK Labour Party  Jeremy Corbyn announced that he would create a publicly owned generics manufacturer and use compulsory Crown licences to secure rights to certain medicines.

In the US, meanwhile, campaigners advocating for greater access to HIV prevention medicines (known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP) have called on the US government to “break the patent” with respect to  Gilead’s Truvada.

Gilead and the US government are currently embroiled in a patent dispute over PrEP, after the government took the unusual step of  suing the drug company for patent infringement.

The  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a US federal agency, owns four patents covering the use of Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir) and (emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide).


More on this story

Europe
25 September 2019   Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour Party, has pledged to create a publicly-owned drugs manufacturer and use compulsory licensing to sell generic, lower priced versions of drugs to the country’s National Health Service.

More on this story

Europe
25 September 2019   Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour Party, has pledged to create a publicly-owned drugs manufacturer and use compulsory licensing to sell generic, lower priced versions of drugs to the country’s National Health Service.