On the initiative of Julia Rauner and her team of the Commercial Service at the US Embassy, decision makers from the Pharma and ICT Industry discussed challenges they are currently facing as an US-Company operating in the EU, with Marie T. Geiger, Team Leader EU Standards & Regulatory Division at the US Department of Commerce.
The pharmaceutical industry brought up the topic of the threat of a weakening of Intellectual Property by the European Commission's plans of amendments to the Supplementary Protection Certificate, which lengthens the patent protection.
Another issue raised was that the tendency to lengthen tender processes in the procurement processes of hospitals prevents patients from getting new medicines in an appropriate timeframe.
The ICT Industry mainly brought up two concerns: Extensive media coverage of data-security problems in the B2C sector tend to spill over to the B2B sector, particularly to US providers of innovative cloud services. The Industry's wish would be for the US authorities to support all initiatives to further strengthen trust in innovative and secure technologies and services in order to make innovation easily accessible for businesses.
countries or from their international experts-pool.
In a lively discussion Marie Geiger promised to take back the input of the AmCham members to the Department of Commerce in Washington.