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www.canadianlawyermag.com 67 Bright minds protecting bright ideas since 1893 Ranked as one of Canada's top IP law fi rms in both Canadian and international surveys of in-house counsel, we understand the business of innovation and the vital role that IP plays in today's competitive, market-driven economy. Congratulations to our partner Benjamin Mak for winning the 2019 Lexpert Rising Stars Awards: Leading Lawyers Under 40! ridoutmaybee.com TORONTO | OTTAWA | BURLINGTON PATENTS | TRADEMARKS | INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS | COPYRIGHT | IP LITIGATION Co-operation and Development. Removed from this basket will be the United States and Switzerland, where drug costs are higher. "Canadians pay among the highest prices for patented medicines in the world, after only the United States and Switzerland," said Anna Maddison, senior media relations advisor for Health Canada, in a statement to Canadian Lawyer. "Canadians pay close to 25 per cent more than the median price that people in other developed countries pay for the same medicines," she said. "This influences Canadians' access to important medications and the sustainability of Canada's health- care system." Amir Attaran, Canada Chair for Pop Health and a professor cross-appointed to the University of Ottawa's faculties of Law and Medicine, sees these amendments as designed to be in keeping with other jurisdictions. "It gives rise to an interesting rebuttal to what the industry says: 'If we enact these regulations and lower prices and we stay at the average of the lower countries in the basket, new products won't be launched here.' But new products are launched in countries in the lower end of basket," he says. Evidence shows that lower prices do not limit access to new medicines, according to Health Canada. "Countries with lower prices than Canada have new medicines introduced within a similar timeframe as they are currently in Canada," said Maddison. She added that price is only one of several factors that play into research and development investment decisions by the pharmaceutical industry, and many countries with lower patented medicine prices also have significantly higher levels of investment by pharmaceutical companies. Yet the way that the regulations were set years ago had an impact on whether some companies would launch in Canada at all, says Noel Courage, a partner at Bereskin & Parr LLP in Toronto. Courage says he has talked to Canadian companies that try to license in the Canadian rights to drug products, "and I've been told that they have difficulty getting these rights sometimes because the American or the European company that owns the product does not want to get involved in the Canadian pricing system because it could affect their local pricing or affect their U.S. pricing." With the introduction of a stricter set of pricing criteria that is less favourable to the innovative companies that produce products, "I think that reluctance of certain companies to launch in Canada is going to be greater," he says. The one overarching theme of the amendments is that "the current system