Patent as a Generator Rather than Inhibitor of Drug Accessibility in Developing Countries: a Critical Examination of India's Patent Model

摘要

Patent's reputation as a constructive mechanism in the developing world was not acommon notion. The prospect of utilising pharmaceutical patents to generate drugaccessibility in developing countries did not seem possible. However, little credit wasgiven to patents. Through motivating innovation, foreign investment, trade relationsand industrialisation, patents can form a prowess pharmaceutical industry in thedeveloping world. This thesis explores the possibility to increasing the availability oflow cost drugs in emerging economies through patent enforcement. The analysisfocuses on India as a case study. India has long been at the forefront of the developingworld fight for low cost drugs markets. This stand once meant the exclusion of patentprotection of pharmaceutical innovation and the formation of low cost copied genericdrugs industry. However given developing countries' recent submissions to theinternational pressure to enforce patent protection on pharmaceutical innovations, it istime to re-examine the role patents play in developing countries, this time in theavenue of reducing drugs' pricing. India's current economy and the evolution of itspharmaceutical industry evolvement, make it as an exemplary case study to utilisepatent to fulfil this end. Accordingly, the issue of widening the scope of patentprotection in India to include pharmaceutical incremental innovation is examined.Notwithstanding the responsibility of India to endorse wider patent scope, legally andpractically, the thesis does not ignore the moral obligation the developed world hastowards India's poorer population to offer low cost drugs during the stages of itspharmaceutical industry emergence. The preliminary justification to conduct thisobservation is to show that patent is not only to answer the healthcare needs of thedeveloped world population, but also the developing world. As such the thesis arguesthat India ought to stand at the forefront again, this time, demonstrating the potentialwithin patent to establish low cost patented pharmaceuticals marketplace indeveloping countries.