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Thursday June 09, 2011 |
Yesterday I posted
on how the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's IP
lobby arm, floated false claims about the scope of counterfeiting in
Canada in an attempt to bolster claims for increased border measures.
The Chamber placed Canadian countefeiting costs at $30 billion per
year, a figure that has no basis in fact and that even RCMP no longer
supports.
The Chamber's false claims on counterfeiting are not the only
intellectual property issue where their arguments have been debunked as
inaccurate. My weekly technology law column (Toronto
Star version, homepage
version) focuses on the proposed trade agreement between Canada and
the European Union, which
could have big implications for the costs of pharmaceutical drugs, on
which Canadians spend $22 billion annually.
The E.U. is home to many of the world's big brand name pharmaceutical
companies and one of their chief goals is to extend Canada's
intellectual property rules to delay the availability of lower cost
generic alternatives. Earlier this year, the Chamber's IP Council
released a report
claiming that Canada lags behind other countries and
encouraging the Canadian government to follow the European example by
extending the term of pharmaceutical patents and "data exclusivity."
The CIPC (which counts several brand name pharmaceutical companies as
members) claims the reforms would lead to increased pharmaceutical
research and development in Canada. But last month University of
Toronto
law professor Edward Iacobucci released
a study that thoroughly debunks
the CIPC claims, predicting increased consumer costs and noting that
there is little evidence the changes would increase employment or
research spending.
Iacobucci's blunt assessment of the report:
The CIPC Report does not offer
objectivity in its assessment of Canada’s patent regime. It
rather is
a straightforward piece of advocacy on behalf of the branded
pharmaceutical sector. The Report makes no effort to place Canada’s
patent law in an international context or address international
relations, but instead simply asserts without justification that Canada
would suffer if it fails to grant the same concessions to the
pharmaceutical industry that the EU and US have made. The flaws in this
basic approach undermine each of the CIPC Report’s
recommendations.
ceta, chamber, ed fast, generic, iacobucci, ip council, patents, pharmaceuticals Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareThursday June 09, 2011 |
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