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Nokia announced this Monday, 23, a new reciprocal licensing agreement with Samsung, covering patents for 5G technologies, among others. The partnership comes after the expiration of the contract that the two companies had at the end of 2022.

The deal covers Nokia’s key inventions for 5G and other technologies, for which Samsung will pay royalties. The contract, with confidential terms, will be valid for an unspecified period of years, starting on January 1, 2023. The agreement is within the perspectives that Nokia had disclosed in its financial statement for the third quarter of 2022.

Since 2000, the Finnish company informed it invested 130 billion euros (R$ 731.5 billion) in research and development. Nokia’s portfolio comprises around 20,000 patent families, with more than 4,500 considered “essential for 5G”.

The company contributes its inventions under open standards and, in return, has the right to license them on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms.

In this way, companies can license and use these technologies without making their own investments in standards.

Source: Mobile Time

In 2024, the Walt Disney Company will no longer be able to prevent other artists or companies from using the Mickey Mouse character image, which will fall into the public domain.

However, Disney also still holds trademark protection on Mickey Mouse, which is renewable for each 10-year period. While copyright keeps other companies from reproducing the Mickey Mouse image, a trademark ensures that other companies are not allowed to use the Mickey Mouse image in order to designate goods that could be considered as being produced by Disney.

Under US law, the mouse created for a cartoon in 1928 is expected to lose copyright protection.

With this, anyone can use Mickey without a license agreement. However, only the version that appears in the 1928 Steamboat Willie short film can be used freely.

According to the country’s current intellectual property law, characters and other artworks are no longer exclusive to those who created them after 95 years of conception.

Mickey Mouse — the creation of illustrator Walt Disney, the rodent that would become the hallmark of a global entertainment empire — whose silhouette consists simply of a large circle and two smaller circles that serve as ears, launched his career with The Steamer Willie, in New York on November 18, 1928.

This week, in an unprecedented decision, the 6th Panel of the Superior Court of Justice allowed three Brazilians to plant marijuana for medicinal purposes.

To show the impact of this decision on the lives of those who depend on very expensive treatments – and who can now be authorized to produce their own medicine at home – check out the conversation with researchers and with one of the patients who received this authorization.

A little marijuana plant will get big, flower, and be transformed into this extract. This is how the entire production is controlled by a 27-year-old who lives in Sorocaba, in the interior of São Paulo.

“I chose not to appear because there is still a lot of prejudice. I’m not doing anything wrong,” said the patient, who asked not to be identified.

And he’s not committing any crime, anyway. The Superior Court of Justice authorizes it. Until now, habeas corpus – authorizations for planting – had only been issued by lower courts, never by the STJ, which is a federal court. But the ministers of the 6th Panel were unanimous in their decision last Tuesday (14th).

The young man from Sorocaba had already asked for authorization to plant in the municipal and state courts, but without success. In addition to this case, the ministers of the 6th Panel of the STJ also gave permission for a woman and her nephew to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes. He treats psychiatric disorders.

“I have been taking medicine since I was 12 years old. Anything was cause for anxiety. I had really, really bad depression,” he said, who was introduced to medical marijuana by his mother.

The mother, in turn, decided to take a course.

“I had a certain prejudice, but then you learn in the course that what you are taking is a medication”, she says.

Reporter: And how are you today?
Patient: I haven’t known what it’s like to have an anxiety attack for almost two years.

Who prescribed marijuana substances for the three patients was Dr. Eliane Nunes, psychiatrist and founder of the Brazilian Society for the Study of Cannabis Sativa. She and a group of lawyers helped to set up court cases for patients authorized by the STJ to plant at home.

“We want the right of all patients to plant. What we don’t have here in Brazil is the regulation of this domestic cultivation”, says Eliane.

Today, there are five associations with granted habeas corpus for planting and production in Brazil. And there is no exact number of families authorized to cultivate for medicinal use.

It is also possible to import or buy medicines made with substances taken from the plant in pharmacies. But there are many people who want to grow and make their own oil because of the high price.

The planting of cannabis Sativa appears in 33 proposals that are being processed today in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Senate, there are three projects that deal with the regulation of the cultivation, harvesting, and medicinal use.

Source: G1

“I heard my son say ‘I love you’ for the first time when I was 8 years old”, says Priscila Guterres Moraes, 41, Levi’s mother. Premature, autistic, and unable to express himself alone, the mother says the boy found new “brain connections” that unlocked his speech after receiving the substances derived from marijuana.

The achievement of incalculable value for parents is a reflection of the struggle for the release of medical cannabis intensified since 2010 in Brazil: the import authorization for the product that guarantees a new life for Priscila’s son was one of more than 70,000 already granted since 2015.

A number even lower than the potential of medicines, according to experts, but which already represents a 15-fold increase in imports in 5 years. An expanding market that promises to treat more than 20 different medical conditions and which already has 18 products authorized for sale in pharmacies across the country.

Levi, Priscilla’s son, is now almost 10 years old. After so many consultations, the mother herself explains in a simplified way what CBD (cannabidiol), one of the substances in cannabis, caused her son: “[He had a brain condition] as if they were disconnected wires… It seems that [with CBD] the connections met, the little threads met”, says Priscila.

This system is directly or indirectly related to a list of conditions, disorders, or diseases described in different studies with cannabis derivatives. They are in the spotlight of science and even the international pharmaceutical market: refractory epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, ASD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and even mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

Source: G1

The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) approved the use and marketing in Brazil of the first product derived from medical cannabis with a THC concentration above 0.2%. This is Cannabis sativaGreenCare Extract (160.32 mg/ml). This is the 16th cannabis-based product approved by ANVISA.

Medicine is the 15th allowed in Brazil. The medicine will be manufactured in Canada and can be sold, with a prescription, in pharmacies and drugstores.

The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) approved, this Monday (25), the importation of a new medicinal product based on Cannabis, the Cannabidiol Active Pharmaceutical. The drug can be sold in pharmacies and drugstores, with a doctor’s prescription, through a type B prescription, which has a blue color.

This is the 15th cannabidiol-based product approved for medicinal purposes in Brazil. The product, which will be manufactured in Canada, is an oral solution with a concentration of 20 mg/mL of cannabidiol (CBD), with up to 0.2% of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

The measure was published in the Official Gazette (DOU). The delivery of the product must be made by the pharmacist.

Source: G1

Cannabis-based treatments have shown great promise for a number of conditions, such as chronic pain, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis. As a result, the number of drugs approved by Anvisa that use cannabis as a base, as well as imports, has also been growing.

In all, there are already 14 cannabis-based drugs approved by Anvisa, which can be found in pharmacies here in Brazil. Imports have also risen sharply, from 19,150 in 2020 to 40,191 in 2021, an increase of 109.8% in just one year.

Prescription is still very rare

However, cannabis-based medicines can only be sold with a doctor’s prescription, and this is where the issue starts to get a little more complex. Even with the rise in drug approvals, the number of prescriptions is still relatively low.

According to data from Anvisa, only 2,100 Brazilian professionals are able to prescribe cannabis-based medicines. This number is equivalent to only 0.5% of the total number of doctors currently working in Brazil.

“The medical profession needs to delve deeper into the potential of medical cannabis, because, without knowledge, there is no safety to prescribe”, declared neurosurgeon Flávia Montagner. According to the doctor, the demand for cannabis-based medicines by patients has grown a lot.

Source: Olhar Digital

From depression to epilepsy, multiple sclerosis to chronic pain, phobia to menstrual cramps — never has science advanced so far in discovering the medicinal properties of cannabis, the marijuana plant. It is estimated that the effects of cannabidiol, a substance found in small volumes in the stem and leaf of the herb, are being tested in at least twenty diseases in large reference centers around the world. One of the most extraordinary works is Brazilian. Researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP), in Ribeirão Preto, identified the therapeutic action of the compound in burnout, the syndrome of professional burnout.

Published in the journal JAMA, of the American Medical Association, the study evaluated 120 health professionals on the front lines of the response to Covid-19. Daily doses of 300 mg of the drug reduced symptoms of emotional fatigue by 25% in the volunteers, depression by 50%, and anxiety by 60%.

Well, now the group of scientists is studying the action of cannabidiol on Covid-19.

— We are evaluating, in partnership with the USP Institute of Psychiatry in São Paulo, the effect of cannabidiol in preventing the neurological and general medical consequences of coronavirus infection — says the leader of the research, psychiatrist José Alexandre Crippa.

Scientists have discovered that cannabidiol acids can bind to the Spike protein, the structure that the coronavirus uses to enter cells. With this, cannabis compounds could prevent infection. The work, published in the Journal of Natural Products, was developed in a laboratory and still needs to go through new steps, such as testing on humans.

Source: O Globo

Scientists from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) created an adhesive capable of curing, in 24 hours, the lesion caused by the herpes simplex virus. The very low-cost dressing, moldable to the size of the lesion, and which requires constant replacement, works through the controlled release of the drug Acyclovir in the region of the skin or mucosa affected by this category of the infectious agent.

How is it developed

Developed from a mixture of bioabsorbable and biodegradable synthetic polymers, the regenerative adhesive has a small dimension and high surface area, facilitating the addition of pharmacological agents, mainly Acyclovir, and aesthetic comfort.

Both the size and shape and the concentration of drug available are easily adaptable to the needs of a patient, unlike the current treatment through the use of Acyclovir tablets or ointment.

Kaline Ferreira, one of the inventors of the patent, explains that the characteristics of the adhesive can be modified as the proportion of polymers that make up its structure is varied. It is also possible to change the release of Acyclovir by modifying the structural dimensions of the dressing by controlling the polymer concentrations used and the production process parameters.

She points out that, even though it can be sold in any pharmacy, the Ministry of Health reinforces that any antiviral drug needs a prescription.

How the herpes sore patch can be made available

The regenerative adhesive was developed between 2015 and 2017. The patent was filed in June 2018, with the Brazilian Patent Office (BPTO). The dressing development process will be published soon. The articles are undergoing peer review in international journals.

The creators of the patent intend to talk to pharmaceutical companies to evaluate the cost-benefit for large-scale production of the adhesive.

Source: Portal Correio