Posts Tagged: "public health"

IP Valuation for the Preservation of Public Health: Managing IP in the Age of COVID-19

Certainly, patents that read on a potential cure for COVID-19 deserve special treatment. After all, the cure for COVID-19 is not only crucial to save lives all over the world, but also to avoid the collapse of the global economy. Yet, what such special treatment might look like and how special a treatment is necessary is where opinions diverge. In the United States, activists demand that the government should have the rights to the anti-retro viral drug, ‘Remdesivir’. The Open Covid Pledge proposes that all IP related to COVID-19 should be made freely available. Its founding adopters were technology companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and Amazon. In contrast, among pharmaceutical companies, the idea of giving up all related IP for free has been viewed critically. With this in mind, the question is therefore not whether patents related to COVID-19 should be given away for free or not, but rather how the profit motive can be managed in public- private partnerships for the benefit of public health.

Roya Ghafele

June 23, 2020

Public Health is a Mess Because Governments are Obstructing Innovation in Nutrition

Experts agree that public health issues in the United States are not being solved despite an abundance of highly trained personnel, remarkable facilities, and access to the newest drugs and technologies. Instead, health care costs keep rising as the technology advances. A significant part of the problem is that governments are more likely to grant patents to drugs, devices, and treatments over nutrition innovations, making treatments more financially rewarding than prevention and increasing the disease burden and health care costs. Though there is no restriction against nutritional inventions in most patent laws, in practice the patent system favors drugs, devices, and treatments over nutritional solutions. Further, when nutritional patents are granted, they are severely restricted, such as to a narrow formulation or to fortification of foods with certain nutrients for certain use.

Urvashi Bhagat

October 11, 2019