Broad-Based Compulsory Licensing of Pharmaceutical Technologies: Unsound Public Policy
1 July 2001
By Dr. Richard Rozek et al.
An emerging trend among developing countries is to enact laws for protecting the intellectual property rights (IPRs) embodied in pharmaceutical products. However, some commentators attempt to undermine the new legal regimes by advocating policies such as broad-based compulsory or involuntary licensing of IPRs. The analyses leading to their conclusions are seriously flawed for a number of reasons. Specifically, they misunderstand the use of licensing as an antitrust remedy and overlook the success of alternative approaches to compulsory licensing of IPRs for pharmaceutical technologies to address current public health problems such as AIDS in Africa.
There are potentially harmful effects in those developing countries that adopt broad-based compulsory licensing of IPRs for pharmaceutical technologies in terms of reduced prospects for economic growth and problems of improving access to health care. In this article, we discuss our concerns with broad-based compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical technologies.
This article was published in The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Vol. 4, No. 4, July 2001.
