• EU Finding - Pharmaceutical Firms Abusing Patent System
• Brazil to Curb Expanded Pharmaceuticals Patents
• EU Finding - Pharmaceutical Firms Abusing Patent System
European Commission has recently dropped a bombshell alleging that leading pharmaceutical companies have been using the patent system to delay the entry of generic medicines onto the market. In spring 2009, the EU’s executive branch will present the findings of an investigation into the pharmaceutical sector.
A preliminary report of this probe, launched in January 2008, found that up to 1,300 patents can be filed for a single medicine in the European Union. The robust defence of patents by major firms can prevent makers of generic medicines from marketing drugs for some 12 months after the exclusivity rights on them has expired, according to the Commission. The report is available here.
Examining a sample worth about 10% of the Union’s €150 billion-a-year prescription drugs market, the Commission estimated that €3 billion could have been saved to public health budgets if generic entry had taken place immediately once patents expired. This is based on data indicating that the price of a drug falls by about 20% after a year once it moves from being branded to generic. Intense debates will be expected when representatives from both sides meet to clarify the findings.
• Brazil to Curb Expanded Pharmaceuticals Patents
Brazilian law-makers are drafting laws which will limit patents on two types of pharmaceuticals. The legislations to be proposed seek to prevent 2 patent modalities: (i)second-use drugs and (ii)polymorphs.
A second-use drug patent refers to when another function is discovered in a drug for which the pharmaceutical industry holds the patent on a substance. The situation could be explained as a positive side effect.
In the case of polymorph patents, the substance is made with the same material and shows the same effects as the medicines protected by a patent. It is like a substance with the same crystalline forms.
Every nation has the right to define patent concession criteria for pharmaceutical companies, and Brazil argues that public health can be adversely affected by broad application of patent rights, such as in the case of second-use drugs.
Brazil and Thailand have been amongst the developing countries which have been very active in pushing the use of compulsory licensing in order to improve the accessibility of expensive, patentend drugs. This new move by Brazil is seen as yet another salvo to push the limit of the IP control which has hitherto been claimed by drug companies as a sustaining motivation for discoveries and investment of breakthrough new drugs.
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