The papers in this collection are drawn from the annual The Supreme Court Review, which, since its inception in 1960, has been regarded by such legal scholars as Robert F. Drinnan, S. J., as "An indispensable, universally quoted work of the highest scholarship regarding the world's most influential tribunal." Now some of the most important contributions to the Review have been brought together in paperback editions that focus on issues that are becoming increasingly relevant to the ordinary citizen's daily life.
From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposé of the rush to own and exploit the raw materials of life—including yours. Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think again. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000 patents on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life, and more are pending. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to have medical and fiscal value. Life itself is rapidly becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the medical-industrial complex. Deadly Monopolies is a powerful, disturbing, and deeply researched book that illuminates this “life patent” gold rush and its harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. Like the bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it reveals in shocking detail just how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and compromising medical ethics.
Harold G. Fox is a native of Toronto and a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Law School of Osgoode Hall. For some years he practised patent and trade mark law as a member of the firm of Fetherstonhaugh & Fox. In the nineteen-twenties he was invited to take over the management of the Canadian zipper industry and, since that time, has devoted his main energies to the development of that business. But, while he is identified today as a competent industrial executive, he is also recognized as an authority in his special field of patent, trade mark, and copyright law, in which he has continued to take a deep interest. He believes that a lawyer makes a good businessman. He has, therefore, pursued not only the academic aspect of his profession but has kept an intimate contact with it both as counsel and as writer. He is the author of several standard text-books on Canadian law—Canadian Patent Law and Practice (1937), The Canadian Law of Trade Marks and Industrial Design (1940), and The Canadian Law of Copyright (1944). He is the editor of Fox's Patent, Trade Mark and Copyright Cases, now in its sixth volume, and is a considerable contributor to legal periodicals in this country and in the United States. He was appointed King's Counsel in 1937 and is a Fellow and some-time President of the Patent Institute of Canada. He holds the honorary appointment in the University of Toronto Lecturer in the Law of Industrial Property and, in 1945, in recognition of his contributions to Canadian legal scholarship, the University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. Dr. Fox has decided views on the benefits which are conferred on the industrial and commercial life of a country, and, indeed, on the public generally, by a strong patent system efficiently administered. In his view, the modern patent of invention is not a monopoly, in the sense in which that word is generally understood. He feels that the modern witch-hunt against monopolies is misdirected when it levels its attack on the patent system and predicates the opinion that, if the history of monopolies were better understood, much of the antagonism against them would tend to disappear. It is an exponent of this view that he examines, in this work, the reasons for the institution and development of monopolies, the factors which contributed to their growth in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and the cause of their gradual decline and transition into the modern patent of invention. The approach to the subject is not, however, merely antiquarian. In his opinion the patent system can be improved in the interests not only of the inventor but also of the public. With this thought in mind he proposes an amendment to the patent system designed to eliminate the indefinable element of inventive ingenuity from the content of patentability, a reform which would remove much of the uncertainty of result which in the past has been the main fault of the patent system and the chief curse of the inventor and patentee. In this work Dr. Fox demonstrates an attitude toward monopolies and patents which reflects both his legal training and research and his practical industrial experience. Whether one agrees with his interpretation of the history of monopolies and his proposal for amendment of the patent system or not, this book will evoke much interest and possible controversy.
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During most of the nineteenth century, physicians and pharmacists alike considered medical patenting and the use of trademarks by drug manufacturers unethical forms of monopoly; physicians who prescribed patented drugs could be, and were, ostracized from the medical community. In the decades following the Civil War, however, complex changes in patent and trademark law intersected with the changing sensibilities of both physicians and pharmacists to make intellectual property rights in drug manufacturing scientifically and ethically legitimate. By World War I, patented and trademarked drugs had become essential to the practice of good medicine, aiding in the rise of the American pharmaceutical industry and forever altering the course of medicine. Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, Medical Monopoly combines legal, medical, and business history to offer a sweeping new interpretation of the origins of the complex and often troubling relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and medical practice today. Joseph M. Gabriel provides the first detailed history of patent and trademark law as it relates to the nineteenth-century pharmaceutical industry as well as a unique interpretation of medical ethics, therapeutic reform, and the efforts to regulate the market in pharmaceuticals before World War I. His book will be of interest not only to historians of medicine and science and intellectual property scholars but also to anyone following contemporary debates about the pharmaceutical industry, the patenting of scientific discoveries, and the role of advertising in the marketplace.
In The Global Politics of Pharmaceutical Monopoly Power, researcher and global advocate Ellen 't Hoen explains how new global rules for pharmaceutical patenting impact access to medicines in the developing world. The book gives an account of the current debates on intellectual property, access to medicines, and medical innovation, and provides historical context that explains how the current system emerged. This book supports major policy changes in the management of pharmaceutical patents and the way medical innovation is financed in order to protect public health and, in particular, promote access to essential medicines for all. The Open Society Institute provided support to translate this report into Russian.
