Roche releases Covid-19 test recipe, after EC considers intervention

https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/roche-releases-recipe-after-public-pressure-while-european-commission-considers-intervention-due-to-coronavirus-test

by itcrowd • 6 years ago

148 43 6 years ago

ftm.nl

HarryHirsch2• 6 years ago

Roche have a legal problem. Their lysis buffer is completely unpatentable, it's a standard reagent whose composition has been published many times over and is obvious to any biochemist. And once you disclose the makeup you can't claim trade secret either.

The sanest way for Roche would be to price accordingly, buying your own kit saves technician labour, but we can't have than, can we?

pergadad• 6 years ago

Seems the key issue is that they can't supply enough which creates a shortage for the Netherlands as the machines (?) rely on this specific product. It's called lock-in and is every company's dream. But the situation is severe enough that a strong government like NL and the EU won't let them get away with it. If you're a big company one the things you really want to avoid is the European Commission coming after you for antitrust rules, that's where for once legislation has teeth and the price tag for abuse can be steep.

the-dude4• 6 years ago

Your parent claims it is a generic solution.

I am confused what the problem actually is.

xiphias23• 6 years ago

It's great that finally EU is doing something. It's better late then never.

Companies are doing their best to be profitable, but it can mean trillions of dollars of damage to economies, and many people dying. Governments are meant to step up in these situations.

iguy3• 6 years ago

No opinion on this exact story, but in general there's a bit of a balance to be struck here.

Early on in this thing, there were lots of stories about companies reluctant to fully commit (e.g. to manufacturing masks, or to dropping everything else to work on a vaccine) because they did that for SARS, and then when it fizzled out felt they weren't sufficiently compensated. Had they worked on their usual business, they would have had their usual profits instead. But this year... it would have been nice if they had worked hard in February!

tomohawk3• 6 years ago

Yes, they learned that lesson, and now we are paying for the short sightedness of the politicians at that time hanging them out to dry.

The signal for a company to work hard is to award them a contract. If it's important enough to get done, then it's important enough for whatever government to put a contract in place and get the work going. When those in power require work to be done for free, it is called slavery, not volunteering.

xiphias23• 6 years ago

Sure, I agree with the balancing act. There just shouldn't be any monetary problem going on, as testing is so cheap compared to the effects of not putting sick people on quarantine.

I'm just fustrated of the whole western thinking while Asia shows us that fighting the virus is just a logistical problem, we have all the needed technology (masks, testing, quarantine, hygiene, temperature checking everywhere).

m0zg2• 6 years ago

Why "early on"? Just yesterday GM tried to price-gouge the US federal government, and restrict the number of ventilators they will produce, prompting Trump to actually use the DPA for the first time in this ordeal, something he's very reluctant to do other than as leverage in negotiations.

zwaps2• 6 years ago

Well here the issue is that Roche has been compensated as the orders are in. Roche just does not seek to fulfill them in a timely manner. Which is also a strategic decision of production and inventory. Given that any production ramp up would have been a risky decision in January, the point explicitly is not that Roche can not supply the material right this instance.

What's not okay is that Roche uses vendor locking in or legal lock ins (Denmark) to keep countries from running any tests.

This is not a matter of ramping up production in January ex-ante. It's a thing that happened and was discussed just last week, when many EU countries literally were in a state of emergency since more than a week. In an effort to protect future, not current, profits, Roche has more or less directly contributed to the death of people. And if you think this is a strategic decisions that firms should be able to make in such a volatile situation, then you should probably not be allowed to gain these kinds of market shares in the EU.

Because let's be clear. If there were a legal institution to solve this problem last week or two weeks ago, it would have been used. The only reason Roche responds now is because the EC would invoke its discretionary power, slow as it is.

The only ethical decision for Roche would have been to release either the recipe or release legal lock-ins as soon as it was apparent that they could not fulfill orders in time. Roche, which is not a EU company, should be held accountable to whatever degree the law allows. And to the degree it doesn't, such laws should be created.

From a EU perspective, it is doubtful whether a company that acts in this way should be allowed to do business here in this manner - in my personal opinion. And that's not just empty talk - in several countries the constitutions actually do norm that lives and welfare of people take precedence over pecuniary interests. For example, Roche would have simply have been disowned of their intellectual property by a court here in Germany if we would have had the same lock-in issue. There's ample legal precedent for that, and there are high legal boundaries for such actions. But given the setup of our constitution, these requirements are clearly met in this case.

coretx3• 6 years ago

This is not the EU doing something. It's the tiny country of the Netherlands being a desperate cowboy and Roche being aware of Brazil once having survived a WTO dispute regarding the access to a certain anti AIDS medicament.

timwaagh• 6 years ago

Well yeah people dying does put a bit of pressure on things. Roche hasn't been forced though. Perhaps they decided their strategic relationship with Dutch governments wasn't worth compromising over this.

willvarfar• 6 years ago

Swedish healthcare workers have discovered that chlamydia tests they have in stock are also effective at detecting corona. News (in Swedish) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706874

jagger27• 6 years ago

A commenter in that thread indicates it’s just the swabs being used, which makes much more sense to me.

chli• 6 years ago

Also this news that reagent is no longer required:

https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/03-ssi-loeser-stort-...

coretx3• 6 years ago

The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health;

In Paragraphs 4 to 6 of the Doha Declaration, governments agreed that:

"4. The TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health. Accordingly, while reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members' right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all. In this connection, we reaffirm the right of WTO Members to use, to the full, the provisions in the TRIPS Agreement, which provide flexibility for this purpose.

5. Accordingly and in the light of paragraph 4 above, while maintaining our commitments in the TRIPS Agreement, we recognize that these flexibilities include:

(a) In applying the customary rules of interpretation of public international law, each provision of the TRIPS Agreement shall be read in the light of the object and purpose of the Agreement as expressed, in particular, in its objectives and principles.

(b) Each Member has the right to grant compulsory licenses and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licenses are granted.

(c) Each Member has the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency, it being understood that public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics, can represent a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency. (d) The effect of the provisions in the TRIPS Agreement that are relevant to the exhaustion of intellectual property rights is to leave each Member free to establish its own regime for such exhaustion without challenge, subject to the MFN and national treatment provisions of Articles 3 and 4. 6. We recognize that WTO Members with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector could face difficulties in making effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement. We instruct the Council for TRIPS to find an expeditious solution to this problem and to report to the General Council before the end of 2002." These provisions in the Declaration ensure that governments may issue compulsory licenses on patents for medicines, or take other steps to protect public health.

/!\ All countries of weight signed this already, but not enough countries for the treaty to be in effect and the deadline is in sight. /!\

Pressure this information & save lifes.

tomohawk3• 6 years ago

Sure, but there is a cost one way or the other.

TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch)

If its really important, then working out a deal that protects all parties is far better than threatening to give the business to someone else by fiat.

Roche has invested a lot into these machines and processes. Ensuring that they are adequately compensated and adequately protected from their competitors is important. Not just for fairness, but for also ensuring that companies don't decide in the future that the risks outweigh the rewards.

What will happen, for example, if some local lab starts putting together tests for these machines and ends up putting the machines out of commission? Who's doing the QA to make sure this is not a problem? Will Roche be on the hook for this? And how will the people who are depending on this machine benefit if it taken off line?

These are very complicated machines, and a lot can go wrong.

frandroid• 6 years ago

Saving the economy which will then be able to afford multiple Roche products is a pretty good payment, methinks.

anonsubmit2671• 6 years ago

Don't the reagents for similar commercial lab rtPCR tests typically have to be kept hard frozen too?

CMIIAW: this doesn't seem like a readily DIY biohacking-possible project without some significant infrastructure, procedural knowledge, and expenses.

Also is there a low-volume, open source rtPCR procedure with cheaper equipment and consumables?

the-dude4• 6 years ago

https://openpcr.org/

jdc• 6 years ago

https://forum.openhardware.science/t/pocketpcr-low-cost-usb-...

hcknwscommenter• 6 years ago

Not the lysis buffer.

Vinnl• 6 years ago

I might be misunderstanding the situation, but it feels like Roche has been acting like a printer manufacturer: capture the market with underpriced devices, but having those devices only work with a specific variation of an otherwise not that special input material that only they can produce, and then charging a premium for that.

prostheticvamp2• 6 years ago

“ Pharmaceutical company Roche announced Friday afternoon that it will release the recipe for its lysis buffer if Dutch laboratories ask for it. ”

Is what the article says. What it doesn’t say is whether Roche will actually do so, or use stalling tactics. One shouldn’t count their chickens before they hatch.

woadwarrior01• 6 years ago

This is reminiscent of what happened in 2008, when Roche was the only manufacturer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir)[1] and the Indian drug company Cipla managed to get legal approval to release a generic clone of it called Antiflu in India. And the rest of the world followed soon enough.

Governments can and do lift up patent protections in times of emergencies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseltamivir

Roche releases Covid-19 test recipe, after EC considers intervention

Related Stories