Eira Initiative – Rethinking Innovation Policy in the Life Sciences
About the Eira Initiative at the Berkeley Policy Institute
The Eira Initiative seeks to inform innovation policy in the biopharmaceutical ecosystem by building an intellectual community committed to evidence-based approaches grounded in a “common sense” appreciation of the practical realities of real-world business environments and the unique technological and regulatory characteristics of the biopharmaceutical market. Innovation policy is understood broadly to encompass intellectual property and other forms of legal exclusivity (including data and marketing exclusivity), antitrust and competition policy, research and development (R&D) tax credits, public research funding, national security and global competitiveness tools, and other policy instruments that impact innovation and commercialization in the biopharmaceutical sector.
In general, the Initiative takes a holistic approach that appreciates that a successful and sustainable biopharmaceutical ecosystem relies on a constructive interaction between publicly-funded basic research and privately-funded drug development, production, and distribution.
This Initiative emphasizes the importance of situating these policy instruments in the context of “real-world” innovation environments in which business entities must address the financing, appropriability, and implementation challenges in navigating the path from lab to market, taking into account that those challenges will take different forms in various sectors of the biopharmaceutical industry and will reflect changes in drug development and production technologies.
We focus on policy issues primarily relating to the financial incentives, funding structures, and transactional mechanisms that are necessary to support the R&D and commercialization of new and improved medicines and diagnostics, as distinguished from policy issues primarily relating to the cost of accessing existing medicines and diagnostics.
For More Information on the Eira Initiative
Project Updates
Watch the December 9, 2024 webinar:
Engines of Innovation: The Critical Functions of Intellectual Property in the Biopharmaceutical Ecosystem
Professors Jonathan Barnett and Bowman Heiden, together with a panel of distinguished scholars and policymakers, will discuss the Initiative’s report, “Engines of Innovation: The Critical Functions of Intellectual Property in the Biopharmaceutical Ecosystem,” and key intellectual property and innovation policy issues facing the biopharmaceutical community at the onset of the new administration.Read the November 2024 report:
Engines of Innovation: The Critical Functions of Intellectual Property in the Biopharmaceutical Ecosystem
Biopharmaceutical innovation has significantly improved public health, saving billions of lives, enhancing quality of life, and driving economic growth. This progress depends on a symbiosis between public funding for basic research and private funding for drug development. Patents and regulatory exclusivities are essential to protect exceptionally large R&D investments, enabling the private sector to translate scientific research into drugs and treatments. This report provides a practical overview of the functions of intellectual property rights in the life sciences ecosystem, aiming to enrich and foster a balanced and factually informed debate on innovation policy in the biopharmaceutical sector.
Project Leadership
Bowman Heiden
Bowman J. Heiden is the executive director of the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at the NYU School of Law, and director of the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Gothenburg (UGOT), Sweden (jointly created between academia and industry, in particular, AstraZeneca and Ericsson). Dr. Heiden’s research focuses on intellectual property and open innovation in knowledge intensive industries at the interface of strategy and policy. He has experience working with both pharma and ICT industries, including as the chair of Innovation Task Group for the European Federation of Biotechnology, the cofounder and director of the Sahlgrenska School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the UGOT Faculty of Medicine, and a recent member of the European Community Expert Group on the Valuation and Licensing of Standard Essential Patents.
LinkedIn profile
Jonathan Barnett
Jonathan M. Barnett is the Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law at the Gould School of Law, University of Southern California, where he founded and directs the Media, Entertainment and Technology Law Program. He is the author of The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property (Oxford 2024) and Innovators, Firms, and Markets: The Organizational Logic of Intellectual Property (Oxford 2021), and a co-editor of 5G and Beyond: Intellectual Property and Competition Policy in the Internet of Things (Cambridge 2023). He has published widely in scholarly and policy journals on legal and economic matters relating to antitrust and competition, intellectual property, and innovation law and policy in information technology and life sciences markets.
LinkedIn profile
Updated: January 6, 2025