Gilead Accused of Manipulating Patent System

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has filed a lawsuit against Gilead Sciences accusing them of manipulating the patent system to impede competition to its HIV medicines, according to an article on STATnews.com.

According to the foundation, Gilead has a patent on the combination HIV treatments tenofovir (TDF) that expires in December 2017. They hope to replace it with a modified version, known as TAF, with a patent that expires in May 2022. The modified version causes less side effects, which the foundation is arguing Gilead know about since 2001 when animal testing was done, but delayed human testing of TAF until 2011, which extended the patent protection.  

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation also claimed that TAF is a modification of TDF and doesn’t deserve patent protection and that Gilead is refusing to make TAF a stand-alone drug which means doctors can’t combine it with others, according to the STAT article.

“Gilead’s refusal to make TAF available as a stand-alone drug appears to be a calculated, anticompetitive maneuver aimed at keeping competing TAF drugs off the market for years despite the weakness of Gilead’s patents covering TAF. The failure to make TAF available as a stand-alone drug highlights Gilead’s motive of avoiding competition at all costs,” the lawsuit claimed.

Gilead has rejected all accusations.

To read the full lawsuit, click here.

Reference: Silverman E. Gilead accused of manipulating HIV patents. STAT News. February 1 2016.