Civil Society's Meaningful Engagement in the Patent System for a More Profound Real-World Impact

摘要

The current COVID-19 pandemic has put the problem of equitable access to health technologies in the limelight. Patent exclusivities add to the cost of health care by allowing supra-competitive prices of protected technologies. Civil society organisations can make an enormous difference by successfully opposing questionable patents. Patent opposition is an administrative safeguard which procedurally enables community organisations to play this crucial role as defenders of the public interest. This article supports the adoption of the patent opposition procedural safeguard as it provides civil society organisations with an affordable and practically feasible mechanism to challenge validity of questionable patents. This article draws upon real-world examples of prominent civil society organisations in order to highlight the potential role of community engagement in the patent system. This paper proposes the establishment of specialized civil society organisations which have requisite techno-legal capacity to harness full potential of meaningful community engagement in the patent system.