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Members of Congress want answers about a multinational drug company's deal to save its patents by handing them off to a Native American tribe.
Last month, Allergan gave the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe six patents that protect Restasis, the company's blockbuster eye drug. The goal is a sophisticated legal strategy to avoid having the US Patent Office proceed with a process called inter partes review, which is a kind of quasi-litigation in which opponents of a patent can try to have them revoked. Lawyers for Allergan are hoping that the principle of sovereign immunity, in which Native American tribes are treated as sovereign nations in certain ways, will protect their patents from government review.
The strategy may well succeed. IPR proceedings against patents held by public universities have been canceled on at least two occasions, when the Patent Trial and Appeals Board held that the universities benefit from sovereign immunity because they are state actors. The St. Regis Mohawk tribe will be paid an annual royalty of $15 million as long as the patents are valid.
The move is a legal maneuver to avoid challenges to their patent.
takyon: Allergan.
Previously: Allergan Pulls a Fast One
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:18PM
No matter how you look at it, in the final analysis, Allergan is just using the Mohawk. Few, if any, Mohawk will pocket any money. Their lives won't improve. They will get no respect from the white man. The Mohawk will remain outcasts on their own land, just as all Native Americans who have maintained tribal affiliations. If Allergan wins their bet, they pocket many millions, if not billions. If Allergan's strategy fails, they lose little to nothing.
Cynical bastards. They all need to die a fiery death.
IMO, the strategy will fail. They applied for a patent. The patent has not been awarded. They can't give away a patent that has never been awarded. They can't sell a patent that has never been awarded. Either the patent is invalid, or it is valid. Only the agency to which they originally applied can make that determination. Analogy with courts would be, you file suit against someone, the court seems to be siding with the defendant, so you move to have the trial moved elsewhere. I really don't think that's going to work.