TRIPS and Access to Medicines: Pharmaceutical Patents and the Experience of Brazil

TRIPS and Access to Medicines is a timely topic examining the Brazilian health and innovation policy, given the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and contributing to the discussion on the balance of patent rights and the right of access to medicines. Although ideally a patent system for pharmaceuticals should serve to incentivize research into the development of new medicines, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the equal importance access to drug and its affordability. This book, by focusing on the Brazilian rule which makes the grant of pharmaceutical patents dependent on the prior consent of the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), shows how the Brazilian model could be an example for other countries to follow in dealing with challenges of patent protection and the right to healthcare.

What’s in this book:

Based on an empirical study in which the author examined 147 reports issued by ANVISA as a basis for its decisions, the book deals with central questions concerning the interface of regulation and innovation in the patent system such as the following:

• compatibility between ANVISA’s prior consent mechanism and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement;
• how “evergreening” and “trivial patents” undermine public health and access to medicines;
• ways of correcting abuses of patent rights and controlling quality of patents; and
• discourse on health as a human right.

In its commitment to harmonizing patent rights and the right to access of affordable medicines, Brazil’s patent system for pharmaceuticals stands out as a workable response to the basic problem of access to medicines in the developing world.

How this will help you:

This book is a well-researched contribution dealing with the central question of the interface of regulation and innovation in the patent system. Describing the successes and failures of the Brazilian policy in promoting drug access, this book helps policymakers in emerging countries to better explore TRIPS flexibilities when dealing with similar problems and provides practitioners in the law of the World Trade Organization, patent law, competition law, and health law a guidance on how a more equitable pharmaceutical patenting system could work in practice.