The Role of Patents in Latin American Development: 'models of protection' of pharmaceutical patents and access to medicines in Brazil, Chile and Venezuela

Abstract

The Role of Patents in the Latin American Development: ‘Models of Protection’ of pharmaceutical patents and access to medicines in Brazil, Chile and Venezuela Access to medicines, pharmaceutical patents, and public health are topics often addressed in the news. On the one hand, there is an imperative need to tackle pressing health concerns, and on the other hand, it is also important to provide adequate incentives to carry out research and development. Even though common health concerns exist within the developing world, each country has a different set of needs. The approach to solve or the strategies to balance intellectual property rights and access to medicines vary at large. Latin American countries i.e. Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, even though geographically located in the same continent, deal with the challenges in a different and unique manner. Before the TRIPS Agreement countries had the freedom to decide on whether or not to grant patent protection for medicines. Thus, most of the developing and least developed countries, now WTO member countries, did not provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals because they feared that patent protection would increase the price of pharmaceuticals, and hence, become an obstacle for the access to medicines. On the one hand, patent protection represents an incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to carry out R&D for new and needed drugs. But on the other hand, patents, as the system of financing R&D, has been regarded as a flawed system due to the high costs transferred to the finalised product (medicine) thus deterring access to medicines. Patent protection allows the inventor to prevent others from making use, selling, producing or distributing the invention without his consent for a period of no less than 20 years. Moreover, these rights conferred by the patent grant seem to constitute the pharmaceutical industry’s incentive to recoup the high costs associated with the R&D of a new drug. This book reviews the strategies or models of protection used in Brazil, Chile and Venezuela to balance both intellectual property rights (pharmaceutical patents) and access to medicines. Each country seems to have shaped their policies in accordance with their national priorities, whether these are motivated by health, political or commercial issues. This study portrays the different approaches followed in different national contexts despite all three having to implement the minimum standards of intellectual property protection according to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The outcome of the comparison of the policy implementations and the patterns followed by each of the analysed countries is without a doubt the main contribution of this academic study