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A recent agreement by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a potentially landmark case on the medical use of marijuana could ultimately decide whether the chronically ill can use the drug in Massachusetts. The high court agreed to hear a U.S. Justice Department appeal of a ruling that would allow marijuana clubs in California to provide pot to patients who are able to prove its medical necessity. LAW Professor Jack Beermann says in a November 28 Boston Herald story, "This could make or break state efforts to authorize the medicinal use of marijuana. If the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided there's a federal law that prohibits distribution and manufacturing of marijuana, then a state could not authorize violations of that." Nine states have passed the medical-marijuana law. In 1996, former Massachusetts Governor William Weld signed into law the Therapeutic Research Act, which theoretically permitted the drug's medical use for the effects of glaucoma, chemotherapy, and asthma. But the major problem in implementing such a state policy has been in finding a legal, federally sanctioned source, or "dealer."

In India, a peculiar form of piracy has pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, Glaxo Wellcome, and Aventis angry over the copying and underselling of their products. Under Indian law, only manufacturing processes - and not the products themselves - are covered by patents. According to American pharmaceutical manufacturing executives, this equates to an estimated $40 billion loss in annual world sales of drugs, because pirate drug companies in countries like India, China, and Thailand replicate products and sell them at low cost. A study by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America this year found that losses in India alone were at $69 million a year from 20 common knockoff drugs.

In the December 1 New York Times, SMG Professor Iain Cockburn expresses concerns that there may be serious problems with pirate companies, because some of them make weak or even toxic counterfeits. Apart from that concern, "Western drug companies just don't like the idea that their proprietary rights can be got around via the back door," says Cockburn. "That's the bottom line. It's a threat to the business model." While some business experts agree that what the pirate companies in India are doing is perfectly legitimate, a guideline set by the World Trade Organization states that the country has until 2005 to bring its laws into accordance with an intellectual property treaty, which recognizes 20-year patents on most inventions.

Microsoft Corporation attorneys recently demanded that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reverse U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's previous ruling that the company had to split in two after he found that the company was trying to stifle competition in the personal computer industry. The appeal brief also accused Jackson of violating the judicial code of conduct by granting interviews to reporters about the trial as it was proceeding and by embarking on a public speaking tour after rendering his decision. Jackson's original ruling was based on the finding that by Microsoft integrating its Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system, it was trying to kill off competitors such as Netscape Corporation's Navigator. "A key part of the District Court decision was that Microsoft wrongfully tied its browser to its operating system," Ron Cass, dean of BU's School of Law, says in the Boston Globe November 28. "The Microsoft argument is that, in fact, the decision to integrate them was a standard business decision, similar to a lot of other business decisions." Cass says that Microsoft is also challenging court findings of improper pricing of its products and a pattern of behavior that constituted a monopoly.

BU thinks so much of the potential in the arena of light technology that it has launched a new business incubator within its $80 million Photonics Center, reports the Boston Globe on December 4. "Our goal is to take technology and move it to general use," says Donald C. Fraser, founding director of the six-year-old Photonics Center. With the incubator, he adds, "We want to help accelerate young companies into the market. This is not some mad scientist in a lab. The real world is the best teacher, and we've brought the real world in here."

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

8 December 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations