Patent Baristas

Evolving IP Marketplace
The Federal Trade Commission held the fourth in its series of hearings on the Evolving IP Marketplace. This set of hearings will explore the emergence of new business models in the market for intellectual property, strategies for buying, selling and licensing patents and the role of secondary markets. Discussions covered some of the [...]

Vaya con dios, Genentech
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is going to pay $46.8 billion in cash to buy the 44 percent of biotech leader Genentech that it doesn’t already own.  The deal values Genentech at more than $100 billion.  Fortunately, one of Roche’s big products is the tranquilizer Valium.  Genentech’s Avastin, a treatment for various types [...]

Therapies for Ignored Diseases
Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) a $1.9 million grant to help tuberculosis scientists to collaborate to discover new cures for TB, a disease that is resurgent in the 3rd world.   The company provides web-based software that organizes preclinical research data to enable scientists to [...]

R.I.P. Heller
The San Francisco law firm Heller Ehrman will formally vote today to dissolve, chloroforming a law firm that survived earthquakes, a depression, wars and social upheavals but was unable to compete in a new global economy. An overview of “What have we learned from this collapse of a century old, over $500-million in revenue [...]

Bloggers May Need to Yield Equal Time
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell (R) recently warned bloggers that the Commission’s decision to smack down Comcast  for hobbling Bit Torrent could lead the government to start “dictating content policy” by requiring blogs to give equal time to opposing views under the Fairness Doctrine.  We’re not sure if criticizing the [...]

FDA Sets New User Fee Rates
FDA published a Federal Register notice announcing the 2009 user fee rates under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).  A similar notice  will also be issued with the FY 2009 user fee rates established under the Medical Device User Fee Amendments.  (via FDA Law Blog)
Homeland Security Can Take Anything [...]

Better Living Through Chemistry
The World Anti-Doping Agency claims that Italian rider Riccardo Ricco tested positive at the Tour de France after a secret molecule was planted in the blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) during its manufacture. Apparently, Roche included a molecule in the third generation of EPO, called Continuous Erythropoiesis Receptor Activator (CERA), that acted as [...]

25 Shocking Facts
Laura Milligan uncovered 25 of the most shocking facts about the pharmaceutical industry.  While some aren’t really shocking — like the price of drugs is increasing faster than anything else a patient pays for — some are not widely known — like pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than research.  The reasons [...]