Free Republic

A high-stakes fight over drug companies’ response to the coronavirus pandemic has split the Biden administration, with activists and progressives urging the White House to back an international petition to waive the companies’ patents — and some senior officials privately signaling they’re open to the idea. The debate has reignited decades-old tensions in global health, pitting such influential figures as Pope Francis, who backs the patent-waiver proposal, against philanthropist Bill Gates, who’s opposed. The proposal was discussed last week by Anthony S. Fauci, a top coronavirus adviser to President Biden, and Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, who spoke about...

We find ourselves at a fascinating—and perhaps terrifying, moment in history in which so much of the past seems irrelevant to answering the questions about our future. How to define misinformation from information. How to allocate accountability for guarding against harmful materials. How to balance individual freedom with responsibility. How to safeguard and promote the creation of original materials in an environment celebrated for disruption and the idea it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. It is no fluke that it is within this broader set of entanglements that the Supreme Court is set to take up arguments in...

Imagine the following scenario: You spend your life slaving away at building some ingenious new device in your garage. After years of painstaking work, testing, and sleepless nights, you finally produce your device, patent it, and take it to market. However, before you can take it to market, someone serves you with a lawsuit.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday unveiled a bill aimed at lowering drug prices by allowing the government to step in and manufacture certain drugs that lack competition. The bill from Warren, who is considered a likely 2020 presidential contender, comes as Democrats are putting forward a range of new ideas on how to lower drug prices, a top priority for the public and an issue that President Trump has also highlighted. Warren's bill would create a new office in the Department of Health and Human Services that would be empowered to manufacture generic drugs itself and sell them at...

BERLIN -- Switzerland's national rail company accused Apple (AAPL) on Friday of stealing the iconic look of its station clocks for the iOS 6 operating system used by iPhone and iPad mobile devices. Both designs have a round clock face with black indicators except for the second hand, which is red. A spokesman for the Swiss Federal Railways, or SBB, said the Apple design was "identical" to the one pioneered by the rail company in 1944. "We are proud that this icon of clock design is being used by a globally successful company," Reto Kormann told The Associated Press, but...

It was Urban Outfitters’ Navajo “hipster panty” and drinking flask that really humiliated Native American Sasha Houston Brown. On Wednesday, she found out she had the Navajo Nation, among the largest native tribes in the United States, behind her fight. Brian Lewis, attorney for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, told the Star the band was discussing how to deal with the trendy clothing company. The Navajo Nation holds 12 patents on designs and styles that can carry its name. Urban Outfitters’ Red Navajo Plimsoll Sneaker and Navajo Wool Tote Bag are not among them. “You have created cheap knock-off...

President Obama, the House and the Senate are about to do it to you again! It will happen in less than 24 hours. President Obama will sign the new patent law which is a bailout to a big fancy influential law firm – Wilmer Hale – to cover up and protect them from their malpractice. If President Obama does not sign the bill tomorrow (and he plans to do so to much ridiculous fanfare since it is packed full of deals for special interests), Wilmer Hale could be on the hook for their malpractice to the tune of more than...

"Apple Inc. was ordered by a jury to pay damages to Mirror Worlds LLC for infringing patents related to how documents are displayed on a computer screen," Susan Decker reports for Bloomberg. "The federal jury in Tyler, Texas, awarded $208.5 million in damages for each of the patents infringed. The verdict form was unclear as to whether the amount applies to the three patents collectively or would be charged individually. Lawyers for closely held Mirror Worlds declined to discuss the verdict," Decker reports. MacDailyNews Take: Tyler, Texas. Rocket Docket. Decker reports, "Mirror Worlds, a software business started by a Yale...

Just one day after the Democrats seized control of Congress, the Chief Executive of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, received the patent for a residential cap-and-trade system (Patent 6904336), What this means is that Raines, along with several colleagues who also “own” the patent, could stand to make huge amounts of money if the cap-and-trade regime was ever brought to the residential marketplace. What does this have to do with Fannie Mae? Absolutely nothing. To understand the implications, a little discussion about patenting is needed. Patents are basically “ownership” rights to an invention. If you invent something, you can license it...

The proposed Patent Reform Act of 2007 will be coming up for a vote in the Senate in a few months. A similar version of the bill has already passed in the House. The bill has certain relatively benign provisions, but let's ignore them since they just cloud the argument and are of little interest to either side in the debate. Let's instead just cut to the chase. In lay terms, the bill makes it easier to challenge issued patents and harder for patent holders to obtain compensation through the U.S. legal system. Regardless of how that sounds to you,...

Congressman Rohrabacker was on the floor railing against H.R.1908 due for a vote on the floor Friday. Just caught the last three or four minutes of his speech. He called it the STEAL AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY ACT. Asked all Americans to call their congresscritters and demand that they vote this bill down as we did for the Shamnesty bill. I don't know everything this bill holds, but he was very angry so I thought I should get it out their. He claims that congress is being very quiet about this bill, because they don't want "us" to be aware of it....

February 13, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor Patenting Life By MICHAEL CRICHTON YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real. Gene patents are now used to halt research, prevent medical testing and keep vital information from you and your doctor. Gene patents slow the pace of medical advance on deadly diseases. And they raise costs exorbitantly: a test for breast cancer that could be done for $1,000 now costs $3,000. Why? Because the holder of the gene patent can charge whatever...

"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" Thus spake the troll in the famous children's tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." Miffed that the goats were encroaching on his property, the troll threatened to gobble them up. But the trolls' adversaries had the last laugh.

WASHINGTON - B vitamin deficiencies can cause a range of serious health effects, including spinal defects in children born to women with below-normal levels of folic acid and anemia in people not getting enough B12. That‘s why a two-step method of diagnosing those deficiencies that three medical school doctors patented in 1990 has become so widely used. It‘s performed tens of millions of times a year, at a cost of just a dollar or two, by laboratory testing companies nationwide. Even more surprising is that the Supreme Court may dredge up a bombshell question not asked when the lower...

May 2, 2005 Secretive Buyer of Some E-Commerce Patents Turns Out to Be Novell By JOHN MARKOFF AN FRANCISCO, May 1 - A Silicon Valley mystery has been solved.The mystery involves a set of electronic commerce patents purchased, after heated bidding, in a dot-com bankruptcy auction by a Texas lawyer last December. They were acquired, it turns out, on behalf of the Novell Corporation, the giant software and computer services company, a company official acknowledged on Friday.Many executives in the computer industry and at Internet software and services firms had expressed concern that the patents could be used to...