States Demanding Gilead Drug Seizure Misread Law, Attorneys Say

The attorneys general pushing the federal government to flex its might on the only approved Covid-19 treatment misunderstood the 40-year-old law they rely on, according to intellectual property lawyers.

The high cost of Gilead’s remdesivir isn’t enough for the government to step in and seize the patent, licensing it to other companies for production, they said.

The bipartisan coalition of 34 AGs called for the government to seize Gilead’s intellectual property rights for remdesivir, in a recent letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. ...