Quoting from today's Denver Business Journal:
"Delegates from the United States and at least eight other countries meet Sept. 6 to start the 14th round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement...
...Biotech observers worry the Obama adminstration could lessen the “exclusivity period” under which companies can keep their proprietary data about biotech drugs secret, dropping it from the 12 years under U.S. law to something shorter. The Obama administration has expressed support for a seven-year exclusivity period, to the alarm of the U.S. biotech industry.
'Twelve years of exclusivity is already on the low end of companies being able to recoup their costs of developing a drug,' said April Giles, executive vice president of the Colorado BioScience Association. 'If you can’t do that, there’s not any incentive for companies to invest and develop drugs in the United States.'
The expiration of an exclusivity period invites competition from makers of generic drugs. Shortening that period from 12 to seven years for treaty partner nations could scare drugmakers away from some international markets, making it hard to justify R&D spending and chasing more venture capitalists away from biotech, Giles said."
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