Merck & Company Inc.

Leading Practices

• Merck & Co. Inc's (Merck & Co.) extensive engagement in research collaborations for the Index Diseases during 2008 and 2009 is considered a leading practice across the sector.
• Merck & Co. has issued five non-exclusive voluntary licenses to local African generics companies.
• Merck & Co. has a transparent inter-country tiered pricing strategy for its four ARVs and vaccines; Merck & Co. accompanies this with broad registration of its products in the Index Countries.
• Merck & Co. has single-drug donation programs for four diseases. The company ensures that donated medicines reach intended recipients by requiring a certificate of receipt by the in-country organization. 

Changes Compared to Index 2008

• Since Access to Medicine Index 2008 was published, Merck & Co. has significantly expanded the scale and scope of its research collaborations for Index Diseases.
• In November 2009, Merck & Co. launched MSD-Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories with the aim of developing affordable vaccines; future objectives include the development of heat-stable vaccines.
• Merck & Co.'s Rotateq vaccine program in Nicaragua was hailed as a public health success by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 'Living Proof Project'. Approximately 81% of Nicaraguan infants were vaccinated with Merck's Rotateq vaccine in 2008.
• During the period of analysis, Merck & Co. entered into high level discussions with UNITAID patent pool;
• Merck & Co. is one of the few Index 2010 companies currently carrying out discovery research for dengue and meningitis.
• In December 2008, Dutch customs authorities seized a shipment of a generic version of Losartan, Merck & Co.'s antihypertensive medicine, as the ship was going through the Netherlands to Brazil where Merck has no patent rights for the drug. Based on company requests, the shipment was detained and then returned to India. Since, Merck has committed to prevent recurrence of such events. 

Suggested Areas for Improvement

• Currently, the license territory of the voluntary licenses issued by Merck & Co. is limited to the sub-Saharan Africa. While non-exclusive voluntary licensing is a leading practice in the sector, the license territory for the company's licenses is smaller than most other companies with similar activities.
• Merck & Co. has less involvement in capacity advancement activities such as research collaborations with Index country institutions and supply chain management capacity building in the Index Countries.
• Merck & Co. 'does not publicly disclose its position on patent-related issues such as TRIPS+, patent extensions in Index Countries and TRIPS "flexibilities" such as parallel importation etc.
• The company's current access program does not cover its non-communicable disease products.