MEDICAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: QUESTIONS OF LIFE AND DEATH

Аннотация

Medical intellectual property encourages the development and production of drugs and devices that save and prolong lives. However, finding a balance between encouraging invention by granting monopoly rights and restricting access to inventions by the same monopoly rights is very difficult. Recently, the United States has adopted legislation calling for an important experiment in finding this balance, by effectively forcing pharmaceutical manufacturers and other innovators to contract with the public insurance system for older people at prices that would be lower after a substantial part of the patent term had expired.