[MSF Press Release] The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today filed a legal patent challenge at China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), requesting the invalidation of the patent granted to US pharmaceutical corporation Gilead Sciences for the oral hepatitis C medicine velpatasvir. The patent is being contested on the grounds that it involves well-known technologies, rendering it an unmerited patent under China’s patent law, which is consistent with the World Trade Organization rules.

[Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain Link (CC-BY-SA)] Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author's death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1961 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2018, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2057

[Patralekha Chatterjee for IP Watch, Link (CC-BY-NC- SA)]  NEW DELHI — Few topics in the global health agenda are as contentious as access to affordable medicines and medical care, and expectedly, divergent views permeated the discussions at a high-level conference in…