Wrong Patent Regime

What is the issue?

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 crises, intellectual property rules is been a barrier for right to access healthcare.

What is patent?

A patent is a conferral by the state of an exclusive right to make, use and sell an inventive product or process.
Patent laws are usually justified on three distinct grounds:

People have natural and moral right to claim control over their inventions;
Exclusive licenses promote invention and benefit society;
Individuals must be allowed to benefit from the fruits of their labour and merit;

How does patent rules function in India?

There is a constant tension in offering exclusive rights over medicines and state’s obligation of ensuring in equal access to basic healthcare.
The colonial-era law which allowed for pharmaceutical patents was changed when committee chaired by N. Rajagopala Ayyangar in 1959 objected it on ethical grounds.
It found that foreign corporations used patents to suppress competition from Indian entities and thus medicines were priced at high rates.
Patents Act, 1970 was enacted subsequently that removed the monopolies over pharmaceutical drugs, with protections offered only over claims to processes.

This change in rule allowed generic manufacturers in India to grow and as a result life-saving drugs was available at affordable prices.
This was affected when negotiations begun to create WTO which would give a binding set of rules governing intellectual property.
It was also said that countries which fail to subscribe to the common laws of WTO will be barred in global trading circuit.
But with the advent of the TRIPS agreement in 1995 this concern was addressed and it was only after this Indian companies began to manufacture generic versions of medicines at low prices.

What is the problem now?

Last year, India and South Africa requested WTO to temporarily suspend the rules under the 1995 TRIPS agreement.
A waiver was sought to the extent that the protections offered by TRIPS impinged on the containment and treatment of COVID-19.
If waiver was allowed, countries will be in a position to facilitate a free exchange of know-how and technology surrounding the production of vaccines.
But a small group of states — the U.S., the European Union, the U.K. and Canada among them —blocked the move.

Why these countries objected?

These nations put forward two arguments for their objections which have been refuted time and again.
One, that unless corporations are rewarded for their inventions, they would be unable to recoup amounts invested by them in research and development.
Two, that without the right to monopolise production there will be no incentive to innovate.

Recently, it has been reported that in U.S. Moderna vaccine was produced from the basic research conducted by the federal government agency and other publicly funded universities.
Similarly, public money accounted for more than 97% of the funding towards the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
Therefore, the claim that a removal of patents would somehow invade on a company’s ability to recoup costs is simply untrue.
The second objection — the idea that patents are the only means available to promote innovation — has become a dogma.

What are the alternatives proposed?

Under the current system, poor are unfortunate enough to have the disease and are forced to pay the price.
Therefore a system that replaces patents with prizes will be more efficient and more equitable.

So various economists are proposing a prize fund for medical research in place of patents.

This ensures incentives for research will flow from public funds while the biases associated with monopolies are removed.

The pandemic has demonstrated how immoral the existing world order is which should not be allowed to persist.
If nation states are to act as a force of good, they must attend to the demands of global justice.

Source: The Hindu