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“Any person who perpetrates any of the acts mentioned hereinafter shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to two years and a fine may also be imposed:The Executive Branch has the power to adjust the fixed fine on an annual basis, according to the registered variation of the general level of the wholesale price index, which is officially published by the National Institute of Statistics and Census.
(a) Any person who infringes or issues fraudulently a registered trade mark or name;
(b) Any person who uses an infringed or fraudulently issued registered trade mark or designation or one belonging to a third party lacking his authorization;
(c) Any person who offers for sale or sells a registered trade mark or an infringed designation, or a fraudulently imitated registered trade mark or designation or a trade mark or designation which belongs to a third party lacking his authorization; and
(d) Any person who offers for sale or sells or otherwise markets products or services of an infringed or fraudulently imitated registered trade mark.”
“Patent pools as a potential means of unfair competition was looked upon by economists and attorneys, until now, as just a didactic hypothesis in Brazilian antitrust literature. This case will be definitely one of the priorities of CADE for this year 2009”. Since the matter will be further addressed by the CADE, the final decision issued by the Council will determine the landmarks in future analysis of veiled anticompetitive behavior behind the formation of patent pools.”In fact, this case may be just a preview of future litigation involving the recently introduced Blue Ray and HD-DVD technologies.
"One milestone in the fight against the disease was the decision, in 2007, to break the patent on Efavirenz, a drug used by 85,000 out of the 200,000 HIV/AIDS patients who were taking the "cocktail" of antiretroviral drugs which drastically reduces mortality and improves quality of life.
Less than two years after decreeing compulsory licensing of the patented drug, made by the U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme, the Rio de Janeiro-based Oswaldo Cruz Foundation succeeded in producing the generic version, chemically identical to Efavirenz.
This year, half of the 30 million pills consumed in Brazil will be produced in-country.
The compulsory licensing imposed on Efavirenz does not deprive Merck of the royalties for its patent, which represent 1.5 percent of the cost of the pills, but the government saves around 60 percent of the price Merck was previously charging for them.
The cost of the Brazilian generic version is a little higher than that of the equivalent drug imported from India since the patent was bypassed, but the main thing is that "the technological capacity of the country" to manufacture its own generics has been proven ...".
* "Brazil: Copyright and the Digital Age: the legal position on downloading videos" by Ricardo Pinho (Daniel Advogados) andThe Copyright World homepage is here.
* "Fire-sharing: Mexico and the US: legislative moves to stem online infringement" by Olivares & Cia's Luis Schmidt.