On October 03, 2017, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the research-based pharmaceutical industry announced launch of a new partnership to promote the accessibility of patent information for health agencies tasked with procurement of medicines29.
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry and Thomas Cueni, Director General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), signed an agreement establishing the Patent Information Initiative for Medicines, or "Pat-INFORMED".
WIPO and IFPMA, the global trade association representing the research-based pharmaceutical industry, are cosponsors of the initiative. The idea of the initiative originated in the industry's efforts to add clarity to the patent information around medicines. It couples with the industry's work in this area with WIPO's well-established expertise in organizing patent data from across the globe.
Pat-INFORMED will clearly link public patent information to registered medicines in a new online global gateway, helping health professionals to navigate the medicine-procurement process for the benefit of their citizens. Pat-INFORMED will make it easier for procurement experts to assess the patent status of medicines, underlining how a well-designed and implemented patent system incentivizes innovation while making available and accessible, key information about patented inventions.
Pat-INFORMED will act as a global gateway to medicine patent information. It will offer new tools and resources to determine the existence of patents relevant to products sought by procurement bodies' disease-management strategies or other works addressing public health needs.
Twenty leading global research-based biopharmaceutical companies have already committed to make information available via a database to be established by Pat-INFORMED. More organizations are expected to join.
The Pat-INFORMED initiative launched by IFPMA and WIPO is an important step to reduce uncertainty and improve transparency in medicines procurement. By adding the information on the global patent status from patent-holding companies to that from national patent offices, the process for procurement agencies and others to determine the scope of patent protection for medicines will be markedly improved. The pharmaceutical industry has taken ana important step.
While patent information is publicly available around the world, resources that directly link granted patents to marketed medicines are currently available publicly only in certain countries (e.g. the USA's 'Orange Book') or through private third-party databases.
Pat-INFORMED aims to close these gaps, and make the management of patent issues in procurement less time and resource-intensive. Pat-INFORMED also offers qualified procurement agencies, a communication channel for follow-on inquiries, through which participating companies have agreed to provide more detailed information about granted patents on specific products.
This online initiative is expected to be operational by mid-2018 and will provide patent information for small molecule products within oncology; hepatitis C, cardiovascular, HIV, diabetes, and respiratory therapy areas; and any products on the WHO Essential Medicines List that are not within these therapy areas. In the second phase, the initiative will expand to all therapeutic areas and explore the inclusion of complex therapeutics.
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