Recent news
October 2010
NIH joins innovative HIV/AIDS drug patent pool
October 4, 2010 --
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that it will share intellectual property rights on some HIV/AIDS medicines through a patent pool that aims to make treatments more widely available to people in low-income countries. The NIH is the first patent holder to join the HIV/AIDS drugs patent pool launched by UNITAID, an innovative financing system funded by a tax on airline tickets. The NIH holds several patents covering medicines and other technologies related to HIV/AIDS, including patents on existing drugs and products in the development pipeline. By streamlining licensing processes for the production of generic versions of patented HIV medicines, the patent pool has the potential to accelerate the delivery of new drugs and help reduce prices by encouraging competition. See the links below for more details.
