Patent Baristas

The Connecticut Attorney General is suing McKesson Corp., the nation’s largest pharmaceutical distributor, on allegations it illegally inflated wholesale drug costs for many brand-name drugs, including Lipitor and Prevacid.
Genzyme Corp. spent $640,000 lobbying the federal government in the first quarter on matters such as on patent-reform legislation and bills that would allow generic drug companies [...]

Pfiscal Responsibility
Pfizer announced that it has posted a list of U.S. medical, scientific and patient organization grants and charitable contributions made in the first quarter of this year, part of an ongoing drive throughout the company to increase transparency. 
Of a total $9.97 million in grants and charitable contributions reported for the first quarter of 2008, [...]

Negotiations in the Senate on patent reform bill S. 1145 seemed to break down this week after Sen. Arlen Specter released a statement saying:
The Chairman [Sen. Leahy] and I differ on a number of aspects of the proposed patent reform legislation. . . . . The principal sticking point is the issue of how to [...]

The Kentucky BioAlliance has established a fund to provide stipends for Kentucky-based biotech companies to attend the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization BIO2008 conference. Companies that are selected will be awarded a stipend to cover up to $800 in expenses associated with attending the annual BIO International Conference. To apply, fill out an application here.
Biotech companies [...]

Today is Pi Day 2008.  Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535… Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th at 1:59 p.m.  (*As noted in the comments, this only works if you write the [...]

IP Newsflash, an IP meta-information portal that browses your information channels for you and presents only relevant, recent and customizable IP information on a single page, just got better.  IP Newsflash is touted as being for “patent professionals who want to stay up to date but dislike the tedious task of browsing through countless [...]

Securing Innovation has a piece on the Eco-Patent Commons, an initiative to create a collection of patents on technology that directly or indirectly protects the environment. The patents will be pledged by companies and other intellectual property rights holders and made available to anyone free of charge. Eco-Patent info in pdf [...]