If you think that Investor/State disputes are only won by the investors, the Canadian government won a claim last week against Chemtura, a US company that sought $78 million (US) in compensation for banning the use of lindane, which is a fungicide.

Remember the fuss back when Newfoundland took away water and timber rights and expropriated hydroelectric assets from AbitibiBowater? Newfoundland said that under the terms of the 1905 lease, these rights were all contingent on Abitibi operating a mill in the province. Since Abitibi closed the mill (itself a long drawn out affair), all of these assets reverted to the provincial government.

Here's an article by summer student Shaughnessy Hawkins, on Swiss claims, which she published recently on lexology

Swiss Claims in Canada

Interesting though perhaps not surprising development on the drug purchasing front: the Canadian provinces have "teamed up" to purchase drugs for their respective provincial drug plans.

There was some big news last Wednesday in a case I was involved in - a decision by the Federal Court regarding a patent for repaglinide. We (Gilbert's) argued successfully in a PM(NOC)application for Cobalt that Canadian patent no. 2,111,851 (owned by Novo Nordisk) should be invalid - although see the footnote.* This is a big deal because the '851 is an enantiomer patent. There were significant findings of fact and law that should be widely applicable to patents covering enantiomers.

B.C. has also moved to cut the price of generic drugs.

The B.C. government will announce on Friday that it will cut the price of generic drugs by reducing rebates manufacturers pay to pharmacies in return for selling their products, industry sources familiar with the plan said. Unlike Ontario, British Columbia will not abolish the rebates altogether, the sources said.

Also in the news: NTP, the company that secured a $612.5 million settlement from Research In Motion (RIM) in 2006, has sued six smartphone manufacturers - Google, Apple, Microsoft, HTC, LG Electronics and Motorola.

Two interesting articles. First, Quebec has applied its regulations requiring it to pay the lowest price available in the other provinces for generic drugs, slashing to 25% of the brand price to match Ontario regulations.

This Globe and Mail article has a pretty good summary of where things have ended up in the generic drug/pharmacy conflict with the ON government.

A footnote from my book:

Braithwaite and Drahos state that business regulatory contests are fought at the level of principles rather than details because “the informational demands of rule systems would make any contest at this level intolerably complex. Trade negotiators cannot, for example, walk into rooms in Geneva armed with their respective Telecommunications Acts under their arms and say to their counterparts ‘this is what we want.’ Often they will have very little idea about the details of their domestic systems. (One US trade negotiator told us that US trade people were ‘ignorant’ of intellectual property law. The US overcame this by sending several intellectual property specialists as part of its negotiating team on TRIPS.)”. Braithwaite and Drahos, GBR, supra note 13 at 527. Without the knowledge and detailed pre-existing discussions in the WIPO and other contexts, the TRIPs Agreement could not have achieved its high level of detail

A short but interesting note: The Spanish ambassador to Canada gave an interview last week where he said the prospects for an agreement are positive, but he highlighted three sticking points: agriculture, government contracts (specifically provincial government contracts), and intellectual property.

The headline on the National Post's website right now is "Industry minister admits to breaking copyright law to build iPod collection."

Here's an update by Andre Picard that does a reasonable job of trying to update the ON situation across a wide range of topics (which is not that easy to do) ;)

Ontario’s backroom deals make for drug-policy chaos