News and Commentary
A bill signed into law by then-President Donald Trump, the “Orange Book Transparency Act of 2020,” is designed to remove invalid patents from the Orange Book list of approved drugs so generic drug manufacturers can more easily enter the market, but this report in Bloomberg Law highlights how it’s only a first step and more substantive reform of which drugs receive patents is necessary.
The National Law Review has a review of the most popular posts on intellectual property from the year 2020, including developments on foreign filing in the PRC, and the prioritization of COVID-19 related patents during the pandemic.
The billion-dollar judgment against Cox Communications for their liability in the infringement of copyrights in 10,000 cases has been upheld six months after the initial decision.
In Techdirt, Glyn Moody writes about a bold new proposal from the Indian Government which, if fulfilled, would negotiate with major journal publishers a “one nation, one subscription” policy giving everyone in the country access to major academic journals.
Nintendo has been issuing hundreds of DMCA takedown requests to the website Game Jolt, which hosts scores of free, fan-created games based on Nintendo classics. While the site Game Jolt does sell advertising, pages which host the individual games can have ads turned off, and the games themselves are created by fans, not Nintendo originals.
New Research
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines R&D expenditures as they related to productivity gains. Though R&D expenditures have increased significantly since the 1990s, they are mostly focused on consumer products like prescription drugs, which in turn is focused on treatments for more elderly people. Though certainly beneficial, these gains are not currently captured in productivity growth metrics.
Another paper compares research efforts during WWII, the fruits of which include mass-produced penicillin, antimalarials, and flu vaccines. Since the R&D priorities during a crisis are different than those during “normal times,” it must move beyond the traditional framework of government providing basic R&D support toward more focused investments.
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