If universities take a stand on this issue, won't industry partners refuse to deal with them?

If universities act collectively, they can maintain their integrity even in the face of opposition from industry -- they have done it before, successfully establishing the norm that industry should not be able to require lengthy publication delay periods for research they sponsor at universities. While industry may not need any particular university, they do need universities as a whole. Furthermore, negotiations on particular licenses are very particular to the circumstance and invention -- sometimes universities will have lots of bargaining power, other times they won't.

Will the pharmaceutical industry suffer from generic competition?

No, they won't. China, Africa, South East Asia and the Indian subcontinent combined make up only five to seven percent of global drug sales. While substantial, these profits pale in comparison to annual pharmaceutical revenue. An equitable access license would enable people in developing countries to purchase generic versions of expensive patented medicines, while compensating the patent holders with a small percentage of the profits. This means that patent holders might even make money from generic sales, as more consumers could afford to buy medications. Pharmaceutical companies also express concern about reimportation of drugs from developing countries into developed countries. However, cheap generic drugs have been produced in India for two decades without infiltrating or undermining Western markets.

Don't pharmaceutical companies drop drug prices enough to make medicines affordable in developing countries?

Under international pressure, pharmaceutical companies have dropped the cost of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Despite those reductions, the annual cost of ARV treatment for a person living with HIV still exceeds the annual income of most people in least developed countries. The single most important factor driving down the cost of medicines is generic competition. The lowest price of an AIDS drug combination plummeted from more than $10,000 per patient per year to less than $200 between 2000 and 2004. But many AIDS drugs, malaria treatments, antibiotics, and other life-saving medicines are still unaffordable for people and governments in developing countries. Furthermore, new or improved drugs will be under patent for at least 20 years and, unless something is done, will be too expensive for people living in poverty.

Has this been done before?

Yes. In 2001 Yale University and Bristol-Myers Squibb fashioned a new kind of patent agreement, which allowed generic Stavudine, and AIDS drug, to be sold in South Africa. The result: a 30-fold reduction in the price of Stavudine in South Africa.

In 2005 University of California, Berkeley, announced a Socially Responsible Licensing Initiative. The university's new Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances aims to balance humanitarian impact with revenue production in its technology transfer activities and has granted royalty-free licenses to non-profits to develop drugs and technologies for malaria and dengue fever.

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