Access to Medicine versus Patent Protection

Patent protection for pharmaceutical products presents unique problems in international trade. The TRIPS agreement specifies that members may take measures to protect public health. Despite the balance that TRIPS attempts to strike between access to medicine and respect for innovators’ rights, conflicts are inevitable. India’s patent system raises considerable controversy. India’s current patent system has been in place since 2005. Before 2005, India’s patent laws allowed pharmaceutical companies to re-create another’s product by making changes to the production process. This system allowed India’s pharmaceutical industry to become one of the largest in the world. For example, therapy medicines for HIV/AIDS cost $10,000 per person per year in industrialized countries. An Indian company, however, makes a generic version of the drugs that it sells to its own citizens and other developing countries for less than $200 a year. As a member of the WTO, however, India had to become TRIPS compliant. Still, India views many of the pharmaceuticals manufactured in the United States as patent ineligible. In the United States, a company is entitled to a new patent for improvements to an existing patent. India’s laws, however, make it more difficult to

These regulations are put in place to ensure that inventions cannot be replicated by other parties or imported to other countries without permission.

Assignment about Patent Protection

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Managing Global Marketing: Assignment

Assignment about Patent Protection

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Managing Global Marketing: Assignmentlg...

Managing Global Marketing: Assignment