NYT: Partner Companies Fighting Over Rights to Avian Flu Drug

Partner Companies Fighting Over Rights to Avian Flu Drug
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: June 24, 2005


Two drug companies are fighting over the rights to Tamiflu, an influenza drug that is viewed as the best hope for slowing a possible global pandemic of bird flu.

Gilead Sciences, which invented the drug, said yesterday that it wanted to take back the rights to the drug from Roche, which makes and sells it. Gilead said Roche had not done enough to manufacture and promote the drug, thereby violating the 1996 contract between the companies....

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The dispute theoretically could affect the supply of Tamiflu. About 25 countries, including the United States, are stockpiling the drug as a first line of defense against a possible outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, which has no vaccine.

While bird flu has affected only a small number of people in Asia so far, public health authorities fear that the virus will evolve into a form that can easily pass from person to person, which could lead to a global pandemic in which millions of people could die.

Mr. Milligan of Gilead said he did not anticipate supply problems arising from the dispute. Roche said it would be "business as usual as our No. 1 commitment remains producing Tamiflu globally." Even if Gilead were to regain the rights, Roche would continue making the drug for two years....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/business/24tamiflu.html

A lot of these fights are of no consequence. This is over something actually important...