Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
May 19, 2000, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: FINANCIAL; Pg. E03
LENGTH: 814 words
HEADLINE:
Senator Tries to Extend Alma Mater's Patent; Columbia Would Gain $100 Million a
Year
BYLINE: Charles R. Babcock , Washington Post Staff
Writer
BODY:
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is
trying to give his alma mater, Columbia University, a $ 100 million-a-year
gift--by attaching an amendment to a spending bill that would give the school a
five-year extension on a key patent used in making several popular biotechnology
drugs.
Drug manufacturers and several members of Congress cried foul
when they learned of Gregg's action last week and are trying to kill the
provision, which is part of the agriculture appropriations bill pending in the
Senate.
Since the late 1980s, Columbia has been collecting royalties
from several of the nation's largest biotech drug companies, including Amgen
Inc., Biogen Inc., Genentech Inc., Immunex Corp. and Genzyme Corp., which use
the process patented by the university. The process is used to transform animal
cells so they can produce specific proteins used in making drugs. Columbia is
pushing the provision now because the patent expires in August.
"This is
just another fly-by-night patent extension," said Rep. Henry A.
Waxman (D-Calif.), co-author of the law Gregg's amendment would
change. "This should die a quick legislative death."
The Biotechnology
Industry Organization sent a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), saying the measure
"circumvents existing patent law and is incompatible" with the
Hatch-Waxman Act, which governs the treatment of drug patents.
Jeff Trewhitt, spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers Association, another industry trade group, said his members oppose
the provision as "outside the scope and intent" of the law, which allows drug
companies to get added years on their patents for drugs whose approvals were
held up by the Food and Drug Administration review process. He added that there
have been no hearings on the issue and "we don't believe Columbia has offered a
compelling reason to grant this relief."
Several major pharmaceutical
companies have tried to get patent extensions for popular drugs from Congress in
recent years, often by trying to attach amendments to bills at the end of a
session. Schering-Plough Corp., for example, has spent millions of dollars in
lobbying fees in the past few years to push various amendments and bills that
would extend the patent life of its best-selling allergy drug Claritin.
Gregg called the criticism from the pharmaceutical industry "a display
of gross hypocrisy and greed."
Columbia's patent is for a
process--rather than the product covered by the Hatch-Waxman
Act--used in the making of several top-selling biotech drugs.
Michael
Crow, Columbia's executive vice provost, said yesterday that the university has
licenses with drugmakers that gives it one percent of the sales for using the
technique. The school gets about $ 100 million a year from the patent, with
about $ 20 million of that being split annually by the four professors who
invented to patent in 1983, he said.
The rest goes into the university's
basic research budget. "This is an income stream that is absolutely critical to
us," Crow said. "It is the single most important source of free and clear
funding. Everything else comes with a string attached," a reference to
government or industry grants that are earmarked for specific projects.
Crow said the university wasn't even aware it could get a patent
extension until a graduate student mentioned it about nine months ago. Crow said
Columbia lobbyists talked to many members of Congress and their staffs in the
past few months. "We were not working in a clandestine mode. We were talking to
anybody and everybody."
He said he didn't know why the measure ended up
in the Agriculure Department appropriations bill. "That was just one of the
buses leaving the station," he said. Gregg said in an interview that Columbia's
president, George Rupp, asked him for help about two months ago. He said
Columbia "screwed up" by not pursuing the extension earlier, so that it could
have been the subject of hearings and debate. But he said he was comfortable
adding the provision to a spending bill because "the equities are on Columbia's
side."
"This isn't a proposal that benefits some group of stockholders,
but a fairly substantial research community that has produced tremendous
benefits. It's one step away from funding NIH," he said, referring to the
National Institutes of Health, the government's main funding arm for medical
research.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), like Gregg a member of the
Appropriations Committee, noted the Columbia research that led to the patent was
paid for by an NIH grant. "They didn't put up a penny," he said.
The
university, he added, "has had 17 years of exclusive rights [to the patent] and
made money and now want five more years. That's what this boils down to." He
said he would move to strike the provision when it comes to the Senate floor.
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