PATENT WARS IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: BALANCING ACCESS TO MEDICINE AND INNOVATION

Author: Rudra Tiwari, 3rd year B.A.LL.B, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith

INTRODUCTION

“Health is Wealth” but for being healthy you must be wealthy otherwise if you get a long term disease and the medicine that can cure you is expensive and no alternatives are present because the pharmaceutical company holds the patent rights over that medicine and has a monopoly in the market, then what will you do? Let’s take an example: suppose you are being diagnosed with a long term disease and the medicines that are used to diagnose you are out of reach. You can only afford it once or maybe twice but to cure the disease you need more doses. Now your human right is violated article 3 of the UDHR right to life because you don’t get diagnosed in time you may die. Why? Because not having access to medicine or not being wealthy enough to get it. It may sound absurd but it’s the truth but to accept this we need evidence but it is there. Where? In your surroundings, near your locality or in your city a certain someone is trying to arrange lakhs and crores in rupees and millions and billions in dollars for the family member to get diagnosed, a family praying to see its member healthy again and hoping someday the doctor will say patient is cured because of the alternative medicine was present a medicine that is easily accessible and pocket friendly because there were no patent dispute, no monopoly and no late arrival in market but what if the alternative is not present or it arrives late in market, why someone will lose his or her life because the no. of patient are less because it’s a rare disease and the medicine is expensive and no alternatives are present. There is plenty of evidence like research papers, news articles etc. available on the internet. The blog is just a medium to present it in front of the readers.

Brief

A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner a legal right to protect his invention from using, selling or making by others without the owner's permission. The term of the patent is 20 years. There are some essentials that needs to be fulfilled to get the patents for the product and the process, they are as follows:-

The product or the process must be patentable.it must fall under the category of patentable items.
It must be unique or the invention should be new.
It must be useful.
It must be non-obvious or it should involve an inventive step.

There are three types of patents that are as follows:-

Design patents – These types of patents are basically used for securing the new designs of a product.
Plant patents – A person who creates a new variety of plant can apply for this type of patent.
Utility patents – These types of patents cover new processes, machines that are new and useful or any new and useful improvements.

Patents in Pharmaceutical Industries

Pharmaceutical industries use patents to protect its process of making the medicine or the medicine itself, the patents are crucial for the pharmaceutical industry as they spend time and money in research and development to find a cure for a rare disease. Some important role are discussed below:-

It protects the intellectual property of pharmaceutical company-
The patent provides exclusive rights to the pharmaceutical company. It protects the invention by preventing the making, using and selling of the original product or the process without the permission of the patent owner.it also allows the company to invest more in research and development without worrying about the idea being stolen.
It provides incentives for innovation –
It promises exclusive rights to the patent holder. The pharmaceutical companies get power incentives for investment in research and development.
Market monopoly-
The pharmaceutical companies enjoy a monopoly over the market because it is a patent holder of that specific product and because of less competition the medicine will generate high revenue.
Licensing and collaboration -
The pharmaceutical companies license their patent tech to other parties, including generic drug manufacturers. It helps the pharmaceutical companies to get revenues which are usually high revenues because of licensing fees.

How patents effects the pricing of medicine?

It holds monopoly in pricing –
The company will hold monopoly in pricing because no alternatives are present in the market.
Limitation in entry of generic medicine –
Patents often delay the entry of generic medicine that leads to less availability of low cost medicine and it gives a chance to the companies to maintain a high price.
It reduces the chances of competitors entry in market
It delays the competitors from entering the market because a large number of patents on a single product also lead to the high pricing of medicines.
Extension of patents-
Pharmaceutical companies extend their patent life by minor changes that will keep them to hold monopoly for a longer period, gradually maintaining higher prices.

Balancing access to medicine and innovation

Easy access of medicine can be provided by:-

Temporary issue of patents and license to generic medicine.
Through controlling prices of the medicine for both rare and common diseases that have high death rates. For example- Novartis introduced tiered pricing in India that increased access to essential medicine.
Faster entry of generic medicine in markets.

Innovation can be balanced by:-

Rewarding the innovation a fixed amount of sum.
By providing resources for research and development at low cost.
By funding the early stages of research and by collaboration or by partnership research.

Conclusion

By this blog we get the information about the patents and their role in pharmaceutical industry it gives and insights on how parents affects the price of medicine, what can be done to balance the access and innovation but some questions remains unanswered like which medicines are costly, steps taken to provide easy aces of medicine etc.