US government urged to exercise drug patent rights
By 
Rebecca Trager2017-10-06T15:18:00
Campaign group says withdrawing Biogen’s license to government patents, or re-licensing them to other companies, could lower MS drug prices
The US government is facing calls to exercise its rights over the patent to multiple sclerosis drug Zinbryta (daclizumab), to lower prices and introduce competition.In 2016, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) licensed the patent to Biogen, which now co-promotes the drug with AbbVie. According to campaign group Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), in the US the companies charge about three to four times the amount that foreign countries pay.