The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Patent System
Executive Summary
Patents are exclusive property rights in intangible creations of the human mind. They exist only as provided in the laws of sovereign states, and can be enforced only to the extent that application has been made and a patent granted covering the territory of an individual state. Patent rights are limited in duration, with the global standard being 20 years from the date of application. The new product, article of manufacture or process described in the patent application must be something that has never been previously disclosed anywhere in the world and something that would not be obvious to a person ordinarily skilled in the field involved. Determinations of whether these requirements have been met are made by comparing the claims of the patent applicant against the body of published literature in the field, including previously issued patents. This process is called examination, and it assures that no one is able to claim patent rights on anything that already is existence.
Patents work differently indifferent industries. In the electronic industry patents are often shared among competitors through pooling or cross licensing. This sharing is necessary because a given product often contains many patented technologies. However, in the pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnology industries the patent normally equals the product, and protects the extensive investment in research and clinical testing required before placing it on the market. Patent protection for chemical and pharmaceutical products is especially important compared with other industries because the actual manufacturing process is often easy to replicate and can be copied with a fraction of the investment of that required for the research and clinical testing.
The extensive cost required to produce a new pharmaceutical product has meant that private sector investment in pharmaceutical innovation has been disproportionately directed to products meeting the needs of patients in developed countries, particularly in the United States, which combines strong patent protection with a market free of price controls.
Until the TRIPS Agreement in 1994 many developing countries provided no patent protection for pharmaceutical products. And, while countries that have joined the WTO have obligated themselves to provide such protection, least developed countries are not required to meet this obligation until 2016. The continuing lack of patent protection for pharmaceutical products makes it very difficult to establish research-based industries in most developing countries. Most medical research in these countries takes place in the public sector. The lack of any means of patenting these inventions and the related lack of experience in licensing them to the private sector, suppresses the development of commercial enterprises focused on alleviating the disease burdens common to developing countries.
The controversy over availability of patented therapies for the treatment of HIV disease has resulted renewed interest in the compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical products. After two years of discussion, the WTO Council recently affirmed that the TRIPS Agreement permits such compulsory licenses in health emergencies, even in cases where the compulsory license is for an imported product. However, to date, no compulsory licenses actually have been issued, even though the threat of compulsory licensing has been used as a means of seeking lower prices.
Read the rest of this report on the pharma patent system.
