Pharmaceutical patents and right to health

Abstract

Objective: Drugs, being a patentable invention and considering the importance of accessing to health and itself, are distinguished from other inventions. Health is a fundamental human right and patent protection is one of the intellectual property rights. Because the patent rewards the inventor with the right to be a monopoly and is thought to encourage creativity and further inventions, so the price of a patented product is high. Today, millions of people in the world are unable to access pharmaceuticals under patent protection due to their high prices and are deprived of their basic right to health. In this review, approaches to the conflict between patent rights and right to health and the policies pursued regarding the subject are explained. Material and Method: The databases in the health sciences and law field were used to evaluate the policies and approaches carried out in order to reveal the situation related to conflict and solution paths between right to health and patent rights. Result and Discussion: The cost of the patent system is shared by the citizens of all countries of the world, but only small portions of the citizens of developed countries enjoy the benefits of the patent system. The source of the conflict between the right to health and intellectual property rights lies in the extension of the patent rights to include pharmaceuticals. With the extension of the patent right which is an economic and commercial one to include medicines with the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rigths (TRIPs), the legal regulations of public institutions and organizations on the right to health and access to essential medicines are of great importance. In order to ensure that patent protection does not interfere with the right to health pharmaceutical regulatory authorities and organizations play a significant role in providing a patented drug. The regulations on compulsory licenses and parallel imports are examples of this. The state should pursue balancing policies between the role of patent protection and the public interest to improve technology.