Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Patents Associated with High-Cost Drugs in Australia
    Christie, AF ; Dent, C ; McIntyre, P ; Wilson, L ; Studdert, DM ; Derrick, GE (PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2013-04-05)
    Australia, like most countries, faces high and rapidly-rising drug costs. There are longstanding concerns about pharmaceutical companies inappropriately extending their monopoly position by "evergreening" blockbuster drugs, through misuse of the patent system. There is, however, very little empirical information about this behaviour. We fill the gap by analysing all of the patents associated with 15 of the costliest drugs in Australia over the last 20 years. Specifically, we search the patent register to identify all the granted patents that cover the active pharmaceutical ingredient of the high-cost drugs. Then, we classify the patents by type, and identify their owners. We find a mean of 49 patents associated with each drug. Three-quarters of these patents are owned by companies other than the drug's originator. Surprisingly, the majority of all patents are owned by companies that do not have a record of developing top-selling drugs. Our findings show that a multitude of players seek monopoly control over innovations to blockbuster drugs. Consequently, attempts to control drug costs by mitigating misuse of the patent system are likely to miss the mark if they focus only on the patenting activities of originators.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Outcomes of notifications to health practitioner boards: a retrospective cohort study (vol 14, 198, 2016)
    Spittal, MJ ; Studdert, DM ; Paterson, R ; Bismark, MM (BIOMED CENTRAL LTD, 2018-03-07)
    The original article [1] contains a major error whereby all rates in Table 2 are mistakenly presented as 50% of their true values; this error was caused by a miscalculation in annualising the original values that represented the rates.
  • Item
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Policy experimentation with administrative compensation for medical injury: Issues under state constitutional law
    Mello, MA ; Studdert, DM ; Moran, P ; Dauer, EA (HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, 2008-12-01)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Liability Pressure on the Supply of Obstetrician-Gynecologists
    Yang, YT ; Studdert, DM ; Subramanian, SV ; Mello, MM (WILEY, 2008-03)
    Conventional wisdom within the medical community suggests that dramatic increases in professional liability insurance premiums cause physicians to relocate or discontinue their practices in high‐cost states. We employed a mixed‐effects model to investigate the effect of malpractice risk, as measured by insurance premiums and various tort reforms, on the number of obstetrician‐gynecologists (OB/GYNs) in the United States between 1992 and 2002. The longitudinal research design examines state‐year‐level data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We found that the supply of OB/GYNs had no statistically significant association with premiums or tort reforms. Our results suggest that most OB/GYNs do not respond to liability risk by relocating out of state or discontinuing their practice, and that tort reforms such as caps on noneconomic damages do not help states attract and retain high‐risk specialists.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Deconstructing negligence: The role of individual and system factors in causing medical injuries
    Mello, MM ; Studdert, DM (GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL ASSOC, 2008-01)