[e-drug] Open patent licensing of public funded research

[Christian Labadie <labc@medizin.uni-leipzig.de>]

E-drug: Open patent licensing of public funded research
------------------------------------------------------------


As part of the preparation of a contribution for the "Aids-Orphans
Whitepaper" (http://citation.thread.free.fr/prevges/callforpapers.html) 
I am looking for an example of the licensing agreements used 
between universities and pharmaceuticals to market a patented 
drug developed as part a university research.  Examples of 
research proposals from the US requiring a prior agreement with a 
pharmaceuticals regarding future research outcomes are relatively 
easy to find, however I could not locate an example of the patent 
licensing of a drug.  Are licensing agreements considered "private"
documents?

Are there current projects aiming to analyse how such licensing 
Agreement between universities and pharmaceuticals could be 
modified in analogy to the newly written open patent licensing that 
the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org) published on 
October 5, 2001 (Open RTLinux Patent License -- "License" or 
"Agreement" [which] governs the royalty-free use of the process 
defined by U.S. Patent No. 5,995,745, see 
http://www.fsmlabs.com/openpatentlicense.html) ?

According to such open patent licence, the civil society could 
require that public research funded in part or in full by tax-payers 
should have a provision that the patent issued as part or using an 
technical outcome of such public research become "open licensed" 
to the humanity.  This would force the pharmaceutical industry to 
invest the true cost of an end-to-end research in order to enjoy the 
privilege of the licensing exclusivity, or to carefully analyse in which 
segment of public health pharmaceuticals can make such claim.

Interestingly, it seems that regional research funding tend to push
hard-wired "business relations" between universities and the private 
sector, whereas national funds appear to discourage such practice. 
Could this be a side-effect of election strategies?

References to articles would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Christian Labadie, M.S.

Universität Leipzig - Institut für Medizinische Physik und Biophysik
Liebigstr. 27, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
E-mail: labc@medizin.uni-leipzig.de

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