Are the Pharmaceutical Companies' Product Patents Hurting those in Developing Nations?
In this blog post, I’d like to focus our attention on the TRIPS agreement, the agreement
administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Intellectual property rights. The TRIPS agreement protects product patents for up to twenty years. Aside from all the relief the TRIPS agreement provides to pharmaceutical companies, it is oftentimes the reason why drugs and medicines are so costly. The supporters of the TRIPS agreement make the claim that product patents and patents on intellectual property lead to more innovation. The argument goes as follows, a pharmaceutical company develops a new drug to cure disease x, this pharmaceutical company places a patent on their product which is good for twenty years, this patents spurs technological innovation as competing pharmaceutical companies want to discover a new drug to cure diseases X, as well. But is this really the case? Do product patents lead to technological innovation?
Granting rights through patent protection does not lead to technological innovation; rather, it leads pharmaceutical companies to develop a monopoly on certain drugs, which they can thereby use to dictate the market. Oftentimes this complete domination of a market leads a pharmaceutical company to mark up the prices of the medications needed to remedy diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, etc. This disruption in the market caused by product patents advanced by the TRIPS agreement, does not meet the supply with the demand. The demand for these newly developed and patented drugs are in low-income developing nations, yet the prices fixated by the pharmaceutical companies, are not reflective of its market. Instead, pharmaceutical companies choose to charge exorbitant rates for their drugs, ones that cannot be pain in low-income nations, leading to the inaccessibility of such drugs. Before filing for product patents, pharmaceutical companies should consider the impact they may have on those suffering from diseases, who may not be able to afford the medication. Product patents have significant impacts on developing nations as it makes access to needed medications more difficult and costly.
