Courtesy Yousuf Ahmed:
So in the beginning of our last GHLP session (sad day), we saw a video on a alternative system to the current patent system. Right now, if a pharmaceutical company develops a drug, it patents said drug for a specific amount of time, usually between 6-20 years, which means that no other pharmaceutical company may manufacture said drug or research on said drug without a license to do so. It’s a way to reward inventors for their hard work, yet this practice has come under fire for stifling innovation, creating unreasonable barriers to drug availability through high prices, and the overall lack of new medications.
What this patent pool tries to do is fix these disparities, specifically with respect to HIV medications in Africa. A patent pool is a sort of sharing agreement between companies, meaning that the companies can cooperate and use otherwise unavailable drugs and research in order to develop new treatments. For HIV specifically, this can mean that new combination medications can be developed so rather than taking 3 pills at a time, one can be sufficient, or that new children centric medications can be researched. And for the inventors, they are paid a fair royalty for using their work in new applications, new drugs. Sound perfect right? What reasonable individual could say no to this?
Pharmaceutical companies for one find it easy at times to say no. Why? I can’t really say for certain, because I’m not on the board of a major pharma house, but in my experience working at a small pharma company the reason that drives most of these companies away from such a power sharing agreement is just that basic idea, they have to share power. Corporations exist to serve their investors, and they do that through the accumulation of power and wealth. In their eyes, the patent pool is a move away from that basic idea, for the patent pool would cut into their profits and increase their competition. There is no perceived benefit in the eyes of the company.
So how could a patent pool be attractive to the companies involved? One benefit is by decreasing the cost of research through increasing cross talk between different companies, previously underserved markets can open for better business exposure. Innovation increases as patents become open, look at the patents on the steam engine where once the patent was lost and the field opened, innovation dramatically grew. And with all this cooperation comes the fair royalty payments, meaning while the companies wouldn’t be getting as much as they could with a normal licensing deals, they would still be compensated at some level for their product. And finally, while I made a effort to explain that corporations have no real need to act morally, at the end of the day a corporation is made up of individuals, and it is through these individuals that we can change our view on global corporations to one that is more ethical and moral.
No comments:
Post a Comment