Today's equivalent of the environmental movement: the battle for the
public domain, the bedrock under every other freedom. This is the
first positive press coverage I've seen of the anti-IP movement.
>From the 2001-03-19 WSJ:
Drug Makers' Battle Is One Over Ideas
Washington
South Africa was the last nation in the civilized world to abandon
state-sanctioned racism, but it is becoming one of the first to
give up on state-sanctioned pharmaceuticals patents. This time, it
may be setting the trend.
The big drug companies understand this. That is why they are embroiled
in an otherwise ludicrous fight in Pretoria, challenging that
nation's law allowing importation of cheap generics without
permission of the patent owner. As a public-relations tactic, this
is a loser. The drug industry has thrown itself between millions
of dying Africans and their only hope of salvation. But, the drug
giants correctly see the camel's nose nuzzling into their
gold-trimmed tents. For them, this isn't about AIDS, or about
preserving profits in South Africa; it is about preserving profits
world-wide.
Talk of trimming the industry's patents is even simmering in the
Washington [sic], where the big drug companies just spent a small
fortune touting their interests in the past election. The talk
isn't just among price-fixing Democrats [sic], who got little of
that campaign cash. GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona plans hearings
on the subject next month. Gail Wilensky, who ran the Medicare
system in the last Bush administration and is an adviser [sic] to a
number of Republican members of Congress, has been talking up the
idea of rolling back patent protection as a free-market alternative
to price controls.
"Rethinking whether we are in [sic] exactly the right
balance point on intellectual-property rights is a
reasonable response" to the outcry over drug prices, Ms.
Wilensky says...
... Patent and copyright policy is the kind of arcane issue to which
the public pays little attention. That allows monied interests to
rule. In the case of pharmaceuticals, a pioneering paper by the
National Institute of Health Care Management last year proved the
point...
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:14:27 PDT