As mentioned in my earlier blog post, I decided to conclude this year by publishing a introductory speech that I gave on April 14th, 2015 at the 2015 Broad Institute Innovation & Intellectual Property Symposium. The speech was part of the session “Bringing Therapies to the Patients” and introduced a panel-discussion with Entrepreneur and Professors of Law and Business about the failures of the patent system to support new therapeutics. The text is below: Peeling the Onion: How to Promote Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicine Speaking about frustrations over the IP system in pharmaceutical innovation, sometimes feels like – to lend the words of the late German Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass – “peeling an onion:” First you are amazed by the number of overlapping layers of interacting laws and regulations and the many aspects of the debate. However, once you peeled long enough you might start to cry out in frustration about the many misconceptions in the debate and unwanted side-effects of recent political and judicial developments in patent law and pharmaceutical regulation. But there also many opportunities embedded in this complexity. In both Europe and in the US some of the current frustration can be directly addressed within patent system, which will probably remain the most important incentive for the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical innovation and thus the availability of drugs. However, as we have heard before, it does not all come down to patents. In particular in certain areas of drug development, other legal frameworks and aspects, as well as alternative and complementary innovation models also need to be carefully considered. Let me therefore start out with a few remarks about what I think could be done within the patent box before I turn to related issues to be found outside the world of patent law. [.....] Continued at: http://blogs.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2015/12/31/peeling-the-onion-how-to-promote-pharmaceutical-innovation-and-access-to-medicine-part-i/