The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine (MEDT) refused to grant the pharmaceutical company Gilead a patent for hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir. On 2 March 2018, the MEDT issued the order (No. 305) which approved the decision to reject the patent application. If issued, a patent could give the company a 20-year monopoly on the import of sofosbuvir to Ukraine.
“This is a very important achievement for Ukrainian patients,” says Serhiy Dmitriev, head of the advocacy at the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV (the Network). “Thanks to this decision, we expect that the price of medicines may drop three-fold, and for us, this means that three times more patients with hepatitis C will have access to modern drugs.
The decision of the MEDT was the result of the work of the Network which, since April 2015, has filed a number of oppositions to the Ukrainian Patent and Trade Mark (UA PTO), substantiating that the patent application did not meet the requirements of the law, in particular concerning novelty and inventive level.
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