By Kalvin Reid
Intellectual Property FEATURE
CANADA’S
GAME CHANGER
W
hen it comes to the protection of life sciences intellectual property (IP) in Canada, the executive director of research and development at Amgen Canada believes that it is a factor confronting Canada’s ambition to be a global life sciences leader. “Canada is losing ground on global R&D investment,” says Dr. Clive Ward-Able. “We must find a way to turn that around.” One of Canada’s shortcomings is an IP policy framework that lags behind other nations, putting us at a disadvantage when competing for a share of the estimated $100 billion that is invested annually in pharmaceutical research around the world. As negotiations progress towards the completion of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union (EU), there is renewed hope in Canada’s research community that stronger IP standards are on the way as part of the deal. But negotiating competitive IP rights in a free trade agreement is generating considerable concern among certain factions, notably anti-trade activists and the generic drug industry. Ward-Able says that a strong, stable and consistent set of parameters to protect the work that goes into R&D is critical to securing economic growth in Canada. Since R&D creates IP, the protection of IP plays an important role in the work done by the life sciences sector in Canada, and the benefits of that work are far reaching. “Canada does perform good research,” Ward-Able says. “We can bring innovation to the world, but it’s also about attracting investment into our country. When that investment comes, a lot of the skills and expertise it creates gets shared.” Canada certainly has a lot of work to do to be competitive with the IP standards of our major trading partners, such as the EU, the United States and Japan. For example, among G7 nations, Canada is the only one that does not provide any form of patent term restoration to compensate for patent time lost during the lengthy approval processes and clinical trials. International investors will put their money where they have the best chance to recoup their investment, and competitive IP safeguards are a significant factor in their decision making. SEPTEMBER 2012 BIOTECHNOLOGY FOCUS 17
