#patents

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it

Today (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Tomorrow (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.

There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:

https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf

And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "evergreening" – coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/

Evergreening got a lot of attention recently when John Green rained down righteous fire upon Johnson & Johnson for their sneaky tricks to prevent poor people from accessing affordable TB meds, prompting this excellent explainer from the Arm and A Leg Podcast:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

Another thing those monopoly profits are useful for: "pay for delay," where pharma companies bribe generic manufacturers not to make cheap versions of drugs whose patents have expired. Sure, it's illegal, but that doesn't stop 'em:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/competition-enforcement/pay-delay

But it's their money, right? If they want to spend it on bribes or evergreening or marketing, at least some of that money is going into drugs that'll keep you and the people you love from enduring unimaginable pain or dying slowly and hard. Surely that warrants a patent.

Let's say it does. But what about when a pharma company gets a patent on a life-saving drug that the public paid to develop, test and refine? Publicly funded work is presumptively in the public domain, from NASA R&D to the photos that park rangers shoot of our national parks. The public pays to produce this work, so it should belong to the public, right?

That was the deal – until Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Under Bayh-Dole, government-funded inventions are given away – to for-profit corporations, who get to charge us whatever they want to access the things we paid to make. The basis for this is a racist hoax called "The Tragedy Of the Commons," written by the eugenicist white supremacist Garrett Hardin and published by Science in 1968:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin invented an imaginary history in which "commons" – things owned and shared by a community – are inevitably overrun by selfish assholes, a fact that prompts nice people to also overrun these commons, so as to get some value out of them before they are gobbled up by people who read Garrett Hardin essays.

Hardin asserted this as a historical fact, but he cited no instances in which it happened. But when the Nobel-winning Elinor Ostrom actually went and looked at how commons are managed, she found that they are robust and stable over long time periods, and are a supremely efficient way of managing resources:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

The reason Hardin invented an imaginary history of tragic commons was to justify enclosure: moving things that the public owned and used freely into private ownership. Or, to put it more bluntly, Hardin invented a pseudoscientific justification for giving away parks, roads and schools to rich people and letting them charge us to use them.

To arrive at this fantasy, Hardin deployed one of the most important analytical tools of modern economics: introspection. As Ely Devons put it: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Hardin's hoax swept from the fringes to the center and became received wisdom – so much so that by 1980, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole were able to pass a law that gave away publicly funded medicine to private firms, because otherwise these inventions would be "overgrazed" by greedy people, denying the public access to livesaving drugs.

On September 21, the NIH quietly published an announcement of one of these pharmaceutical transfers, buried in a list of 31 patent assignments in the Federal Register:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-20487.pdf

The transfer in question is a patent for using T-cell receptors (TCRs) to treat solid tumors from HPV, one of the only patents for treating solid tumors with TCRs. The beneficiary of this transfer is Scarlet TCR, a Delaware company with no website or SEC filings and ownership shrouded in mystery:

https://www.bizapedia.com/de/scarlet-tcr-inc.html

One person who pays attention to this sort of thing is James Love, co-founder of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that has worked for decades for access to medicines. Love sleuthed out at least one person behind Scarlet TCR: Christian Hinrichs, a researcher at Rutgers who used to work at the NIH's National Cancer Institute:

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/lasker-clinical-research-scholars/tenured-former-scholars

Love presumes Hinrichs is the owner of Scarlet TCR, but neither the NIH nor Scarlet TCR nor Hinrichs will confirm it. Hinrichs was one of the publicly-funded researchers who worked on the new TCR therapy, for which he received a salary.

This new drug was paid for out of the public purse. The basic R&D – salaries for Hinrichs and his collaborators, as well as funding for their facilities – came out of NIH grants. So did the funding for the initial Phase I trial, and the ongoing large Phase II trial.

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, the proposed patent transfer will make Hinrichs a very wealthy man (Love calls it "generational wealth"):

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

This wealth will come by charging us – the public – to access a drug that we paid to produce. The public took all the risks to develop this drug, and Hinrichs stands to become a billionaire by reaping the rewards – rewards that will come by extracting fortunes from terrified people who don't want to die from tumors that are eating them alive.

The transfer of this patent is indefensible. The government isn't even waiting until the Phase II trials are complete to hand over our commonly owned science.

But there's still time. The NIH is about to get a new director, Monica Bertagnolli – Hinrichs's former boss – who will need to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. Love is hoping that the confirmation hearing will present an opportunity to question Bertagnolli about the transfer – specifically, why the drug isn't being nonexclusively licensed to lots of drug companies who will have to compete to sell the cheapest possible version.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[reality-detective]

Before you is a patent for "Hurricane and Tornado Control Device," inventor Andrew Waxmanski. 👇

A method is disclosed for affecting the formation and/or direction of a low atmospheric weather system. Audio generators are positioned to project sound waves toward a peripheral area of a weather system. The sound waves are generated at a frequency to affect the formation of the weather system in a manner to disrupt, enhance or direct the formation. The sound waves can also be projected in a manner to cause the system to produce rain.

Additional Information 👇

For more confirmation 👇

Feel free to dive deeper into this Rabbit 🐇 Hole 🕳️ then You Decide 🤔

[ashirisu]

John Green is on the warpath and I don’t know if I really have the words to describe the emotions I feel having watched the tuberculosis saga from the beginning and seeing it now culminate in him gleefully calling Johnson & Johnson a pick-me bitch for trying to evergreen their patent on bedaquiline.

I think that we don’t acknowledge often enough how genuinely wonderful it is to be on earth at the same time as the Green brothers and to see them doing everything they can with their money and influence to make a real, substantial difference in the world. They’re good and kind and inspiring, and I hope that I can someday use whatever fraction I may get of their combined resources and talent to make a proportionate fraction of positive change.

Also, if you’re mad at capitalism and are eager for an opportunity to take it out on a corporation working on some truly heinous shit, please take this opportunity to go shred J&J for putting profit over patients and denying their part in keeping TB relevant in the year 2023.

[todaysdocument]

Drawing for a Life - Preserving Coffin

Record Group 241: Records of the Patent and Trademark OfficeSeries: Utility Patent Drawings

This document shows a color patent drawing for a wooden coffin with a small, round window and mechanisms for opening the window and the coffin itself.  There is a drawing of the open coffin and two cross sections showing the details of the mechanism.  The test reads, “Life Preserving Coffin; in Doubtful Case of Actual [strikethrough] Death.  By Christian Henry Eisenbrandt Of Baltimore City and County State of Maryland.  Patented Nov. 15th 1843 [handwritten].”  The document also has a notation that it is patent number 3335.

[vintagegeekculture]

Jazzberry Blue.

[furby-junkie]

Another patent for the Furby 2012 eyeframe

This one is in English and has a date that says March 19, 2013.

Source

[arcticmonkeysjunglepenguins]

Hey all you know tuberculosis right? That old timey disease. When was the last time you heard of someone dying from it? What if I told you that 30,000 people died of Tuberculosis LAST WEEK.

Now tuberculosis is curable. A key drug in the treatment of TB is Bedaquiline which Johnson & Johnson owns the patent for. It cost about $1.50 (USD) per pill. It is was created in 2003 and the patent is due to expire this month. After this generic version of the drug can be made lower the cost to 50c per pill. Which is vital in poorer nations as we can see from the comment posted below. HOWEVER in 2007 the filed a secondary patent. Meaning the drug will

To put it simply I am not happy about this. The secondary patent is an addition to the first and does not make major changes to the drug. The need to enforce this patent is purely motivated by greed. Which is not right. Johnson & Johnson is big company so it is hard to avoid but I want it to be know that decisions the company is making is going to have an impact on the world today.

People will get sick and die. It is estimated that if the patent was allowed to expire over 6 million lives would be saved over the next 4 years due to increase access.

So I just ask that you keep this in your minds and spread awareness of this decision made by Johnson & Johnson and if you have the time let them know you are unhappy with this decision.

The video that introduces me to this issues:

https://youtu.be/tMhgw5SW0h4

Johnson & Johnson Concern Report page:

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html

[sophsweet]

How the Gates Foundation Hijacks Global Health for Power and Profit

After much though and a continuing stream of new evidence coming to light, I am going to do this. This is a timeline of events leading up to and surrounding the coronavirus outbreak in late 2019. I still cannot prove that the long-lasting, breath-shortening cold many people caught in December 2019 was in anyway related to COVID-19. I also cannot find information – most likely because in 2013,…

[detroitlib]

View of an advertising card for Whipple's patent spring bed bottom. Printed on front: "Whipple's patent spring bed bottom. Patented September 25, 1869 [crossed off, 1859 penciled in]. All orders left at Geo. H. Parker's, corner of State and Farmer Street. Detroit, Michigan."

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

[usnatarchives]

ZAMBONI PATENT 1949 “Ice Rink Resurfacing Machine”

By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs, in honor of Zamboni drivers Alex B (NGA's Sculpture Garden Ice Rink) and Uncle Hank (Northern MI University).

Alex rocks the Zamboni at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Ice Rink, 12/29/22, image by Miriam Kleiman.

Ever wonder about the incredibly cool “Ice Rink Resurfacing Machine” (aka Zamboni)?

We’ve got the patent! See all 124 pages in our Online Catalog (NARA ID 117724382).

Thanks to the Zamboni, the ice was smooth enough for this talented monkey! See Ice Skating Chimpanzee, 1963 (The Unwritten Record).

Excerpt from the release sheet: SPORTS MONKEY SHINES! THIS CHIMP IS A GAY BLADE: Usually, summer is the whacky season, but this winter things aren’t on an even keel in Germany. They’ve taught a Chimp to Skate and he’s a real swinger! After some tricks “Archibald” leads a Conga that proves he’s a real gay blade with quite a line figure-8-atively.

“Ice Rink Resurfacing Machine” Patent file excerpts:

PROBLEM: "The maintenance of a satisfactorily smooth surface on the ice is one of the major problems in connection with the operation of a skating rink… The squeegees have no effect on the hard-frozen rough ice, and the ice therefore remains rough 'until the next time that it is scraped."

BEFORE the Zamboni: "Heretofore, the usual method of cleaning off and smoothing the surface of the ice has been to send attendants out onto the ice to sweep off the cut ice with scrapers or sweeps that are pushed ahead of them; while in other instances, the ice is scraped clean by scraper blades mounted on towed sleds towed sleds or on automotive vehicles such as the small, four-wheel drive vehicles formerly used in the military services and known popularly as the jeep In either case, after the surface of the ice has 'been scraped clean, a thin film of water is spread over the ice to fill in the cracks and low spots, and surplus water is then squeegeed away, usually by a number of attendants on skates, pushing the squeegees ahead of them… 

GOAL of ZAMBONI: "[An] object of the invention is to provide a self-propelled vehicle that can be operated by one man, and which functions automatically to shave the ice, convey the shaved ice to a large receptacle attached to the vehicle, and then squeegee a thin film `of water over the surface of the ice so as to provide a like-new surface when the water has frozen."

Full citation: Frank J. Zamboni & Co., Inc. RG 241: Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, 1836-1978, Patent Case Files, 1936-1976, Patent Case File No. 2,642,679, Ice Rink Resurfacing Machine, Inventor Frank J. Zamboni. NARA ID 83876135

Much more online! 

Ice Skating in the National Archives, National Archives News special topics page

Records Reveal Winter Olympics History, National Archives News: 

Ice Skating at Rockefeller Center, 1937, The Unwritten Record: 

Kate S. Todd Improvement in Skating-Wands, 1872

[mapsontheweb]

Patent applications in Europe.

by @TBroekel

[lindahall]

Abraham Lincoln – Scientist of the Day

On May 22, 1849, the U.S. Patent Office awarded a patent for a device to help boats trapped in shallow water escape their predicaments.

read more...

[todaysdocument]

Edwin Prescott’s Roller Coaster, patented August 16, 1898. 

Record Group 241: Records of the Patent and Trademark Office

Series: Utility Patent Drawings

Image description: Drawing of a roller coaster, showing a single car at the start of the track, which includes a high hill and a loop-de-loop. 

[unsubscribed]

[furby-junkie]

Furby 2012 eyeframe patent

Designers: K. Paulson and D. Judkins (Kristofer Paulson and Daniel Judkins)

Application date: 8th of June, 2012

Publication date: 12th of December, 2012

Source