Gilead fires back in on­go­ing bat­tle with HHS, su­ing the gov­ern­ment for ‘se­cret­ly’ ob­tain­ing patents

While the world ur­gent­ly awaits da­ta on their po­ten­tial coro­n­avirus drug, Gilead con­tin­ues to duke it out with the gov­ern­ment over a life-sav­ing drug for a dif­fer­ent plague.

On Fri­day, the Cal­i­for­nia-based drug­mak­er filed a law­suit ac­cus­ing the CDC of break­ing long­stand­ing agree­ments by “se­cret­ly” ob­tain­ing patents on Gilead’s pre-ex­po­sure pro­phy­lax­is HIV drug Tru­va­da and fail­ing to no­ti­fy the com­pa­ny for near­ly a decade. The al­le­ga­tions re­late to four ma­te­r­i­al trans­fer agree­ments, or MTAs, un­der which Gilead pro­vid­ed drugs to the CDC for aca­d­e­m­ic re­search and for clin­i­cal tri­als in Botswana. Those MTAs, Gilead says, re­quired the gov­ern­ment to dis­close any in­ven­tions aris­ing out of that re­search.

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