Pharmacia to Share Patents to Aid Poor Countries

www.nytimes.com PEAPACK, N.J., Jan. 23 (Bloomberg News) By BLOOMBERG NEWS

EAPACK, N.J., Jan. 23 (Bloomberg News) — The Pharmacia Corporation said today that it would test a program to give its patents to generic-drug producers to help people in poor countries receive better access to medicine.

A vice president at Pharmacia, Michael Friedman, is expected to announce the proposal on Friday in Davos, Switzerland.

A Pharmacia spokeswoman, Debra Charlesworth, said: "We see this as something to address a disease prevalent in the developing world. We're piloting a specific medicine for a specific disease."

Ms. Charlesworth said drug makers have been under pressure to give or discount medicines to treat the H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.

Pharmacia does not sell any treatments for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, according to a list of products on its Web site. Ms. Charlesworth declined to disclose the drug involved in the program.

Pharmacia has been working with Harvard University and the International Dispensary Foundation, the world's largest nonprofit supplier of drugs.

Mr. Friedman, with Amir Attaran of Harvard and Henk den Besten of the foundation, wrote an article in The Lancet, the British medical journal, arguing that drug makers should hand over patent rights to generic producers to help meet needs in poor countries.

The authors said giving away patent rights would not harm drug makers because the developing world accounts for only 5.1 percent of the global market.

"In appropriate circumstances, pharmaceutical patent holders should award voluntary licenses to generic manufacturers who agree to manufacture and supply medicines to poor, developing countries," the group wrote. In that category, 78 countries and 3.8 billion people.

The United States was alone in blocking a World Trade Organization accord last month aimed at letting developing countries without a drug industry violate patents. The plan would have allowed countries to import generic copies from makers in Brazil, India and elsewhere.

The proposal was tailored for medicines to treat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or other epidemics. The United States opposed the measure, saying it might lead to generic companies bypassing patents on other medicines.