Doctors Without Borders Launches Patent Opposition Database
The international non-governmental medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) launched Patent Opposition Database on 2 October 2012, coinciding the tenth anniversary of a landmark decision in Thailand to overturn a patent on a key HIV drug by means of opposition filed by a patient group.
The database aims at sharing specialist knowledge that may be useful to the process of challenging unjustified patents through oppositions, in the context of increasingly high prices for essential medicines that hit particularly developing countries.
The database was built on the belief that patent systems were originally designed to promote new innovations to benefit the public, but unwarranted patents, for example, those that just combine two or three separate pills into one, delay the entry of lower-priced generic drugs and undermine the drive for genuine innovation.
MSF relies on affordable generic drugs for its medical work in more than 60 countries, and in the case of HIV treatment, over 80% of medicines used in developing countries are generics.
