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66 www.canadianlawyermag.com "Pharmaceutical R&D investment in Canada has fallen to below five per cent of sales, less than half of its level in the 1990s, even as patented medicine prices have risen during that same timeframe. This is despite significant government support through funding and grant opportunities for research and investment in Canada." LEGAL REPORT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Health Canada. These include an assessment of pharmaco-economic value of the medicine, i.e., the cost of a drug against its health benefit, says Lainson, who notes that the regulations say this will apply only to high-cost drugs. " The pharmaco-economic value is important because the board is going to be looking at reports that are published by publicly funded Canadian agencies that are presently preparing these types of analyses for the public payers," Lainson says. Other factors to be considered will be market size and gross domestic product per capita in Canada, which boil down to whether Canadians can afford to pay for a certain drug. S e c o n d , c h a n g e s t o r e p o r t i n g requirements will mean that patentees will have to report on all their net sales information, says Lainson. And third, pricing for patented medicines will be benchmarked against an updated list of countries "with similar consumer protection measures, economic standing and pharmaceutical markets as Canada," says Health Canada. The amendments will increase the current basket of countries to 12 from seven countries, drawn from member states of the Organisation for Economic "By having a stricter set of pricing criteria less favourable to the innovative companies . . . I think that reluctance . . . to launch in Canada is going to be greater." Noel Courage, Bereskin & Parr LLP WHAT'S TO BLAME FOR FALLING INNOVATION?