On December 7, Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) Pharmaceutical & Medical Device IWG held an IWG Lunch Meeting. Ji Ying (from Johnson & Johnson), IWG Coordinator, moderated the meeting, and 20 representatives from 10 member companies attended the event.
At the beginning of the meeting, Ji Ying welcomed new and old friends. When 2022 was coming to an end, she thanked everyone for their long-standing support. Although she would no longer serve as the IWG coordinator due to personal reason, she would still work with everyone as a member. She looked forward to meeting offline in the coming spring.
Subsequently, the participants discussed the progress of IP protection projects on specific Internet platforms. They mentioned that at present, some platforms had allowed individual business to open stores. In order to avoid the infringement through false advertising, the right holders should keep an eye on online sales of drugs and medical devices.. With regard to the complaints about illegal parallel imports of drugs or medical devices on the platforms, the right holders still had to make complaints repeatedly in vain. It was suggested that IWG members maintain routine communication and share experience. At the same time, the participants proposed to report the practical problems as an industry proposal to the relevant state organs such as the National Healthcare Security Administration or State Administration for Market Regulation so as to jointly promote and maintain a good Internet sales environment.
With regard to the IWG work plan in 2023, a preliminary consensus was reached on the following two points. First, based on the challenges encountered in practice, the IWG would invite relevant scholars or academic institutions to conduct a research on the harm, legal nature, and legal application of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) and API intermediates, and issue a report, which would help public security and procuratorates and other law enforcement agencies to determine the nature of infringement, so as to achieve better protection of the rights and interests of the right holders. Second, the IWG would complete the white paper on antineoplastic drugs, which would focus on APIs, reflux drugs generated by medicare fraud and parallel imported drugs, and compile relevant information about key products into volumes and finally provide them to law enforcement agencies for their reference. Finally, the participants discussed the plans of calling on the Customs and other law enforcement agencies in 2023.
At the end, Ji Ying thanked everyone again for their enthusiastic participation and looked forward to meeting with IWG members again.