Table of Contents
* Overview of patent system
* Patents provide incentive to innovate
* Process of innovation is long, risky and expensive
* Patents help save lives, enhance life
* Strong IP protection is needed to ensure pharmaceutical innovation continues
* IP: The key to innovation and growth
Overview
* Abraham Lincoln said that patents “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.” But, it was not genius alone that Lincoln and our founding fathers desired from a patent system. Rather, their objective was innovation. Innovation is why we protect intellectual property.
* The founding fathers felt so strongly about the importance of innovation that patent and copyright protection is the only right expressly mentioned in the original articles of the Constitution.
* Patent protection in the United States gives inventors the exclusive right to sell an invention for up to 20 years before others may copy and sell it. However, the effective patent life, which only begins to run when the patent is granted and the invention can be marketed, is closer to 18 ½ years. For pharmaceuticals, the effective patent life is actually closer to 11 or 12 years since federal law requires a company to test its product for safety and efficacy and secure regulatory approval before marketing it, a process that can take years.
* Patents are a kind of agreement in which an inventor is given a limited period of time of exclusivity to make and sell a product incorporating an invention in exchange for agreeing to make his or her invention public, thus enabling and encouraging the continuation of scientific discovery.
Read the rest of Innovation.org’s pharmaceutical patent paper (pdf).
Pharmaceutical Patents
pharmaceutical patents
Pierre Verstraete
February 5, 2008
Latin America has room for improvement in fostering environments where intellectual property is respected, particularly with regard to patented pharmaceuticals. On many occasions, in fact, countries still reward the copying of patented drugs rather than the development of innovative life-saving medicines. Pharmaceutical innovation, however, is undeniably in the interest of Latin America and its patients, and countries in the region should take concrete steps to create the conditions that foster it, including strong and effective intellectual property protection.
Already a success story is Mexico, which has greatly benefited from the intellectual property protection provided through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Today, Mexico is the leading pharmaceutical market in the region. In part, owing to Mexico’s decision to protect intellectual property, pharmaceutical patents and foreign direct investment in the pharmaceutical sector have grown and are expected to grow further.
Strong patent and data protection for pharmaceuticals is good for patients and important for research-based companies like Schering-Plough Corporation. New medicines are developed and medical breakthroughs occur when companies take large and enormously expensive risks. By providing a limited period during which our products may not be copied, intellectual property protection gives Schering-Plough and its investors the incentive to take those big risks. This is the engine that propelled some of the great advances in human health in this century, including treatments for deadly infections, heart disease and cancer.
This engine also drives Latin America’s home-grown industries that rely on intellectual property protection for risky investments. Local pharmaceutical companies use the incentives afforded by strong patents and effective data protection to overcome the risks inherent in the development of innovative drugs. For instance, the medicinal properties of the flora and fauna in Brazil’s tropical forests were well-known long before Brazil’s decision to strengthen intellectual property protection in the mid-1990s. But it was only with the introduction of such protection that Brazilian researchers felt secure enough to take the risks that resulted in innovative, patent-protected biomedical products developed in Brazil for global use—a good result for Brazilian companies, the Brazilian economy, and Brazilian patients alike.
Read the rest of this article on the benefits of pharmaceutical patents.
Pharmaceutical Patents
pharmaceutical patents
