Abstract:
Patent's reputation as a constructive mechanism in the developing world was not a
common notion. The prospect of utilising pharmaceutical patents to generate drug
accessibility in developing countries did not seem possible. However, little credit was
given to patents. Through motivating innovation, foreign investment, trade relations
and industrialisation, patents can form a prowess pharmaceutical industry in the
developing world. This thesis explores the possibility to increasing the availability of
low cost drugs in emerging economies through patent enforcement. The analysis
focuses on India as a case study. India has long been at the forefront of the developing
world fight for low cost drugs markets. This stand once meant the exclusion of patent
protection of pharmaceutical innovation and the formation of low cost copied generic
drugs industry. However given developing countries' recent submissions to the
international pressure to enforce patent protection on pharmaceutical innovations, it is
time to re-examine the role patents play in developing countries, this time in the
avenue of reducing drugs' pricing. India's current economy and the evolution of its
pharmaceutical industry evolvement, make it as an exemplary case study to utilise
patent to fulfil this end. Accordingly, the issue of widening the scope of patent
protection in India to include pharmaceutical incremental innovation is examined.
Notwithstanding the responsibility of India to endorse wider patent scope, legally and
practically, the thesis does not ignore the moral obligation the developed world has
towards India's poorer population to offer low cost drugs during the stages of its
pharmaceutical industry emergence. The preliminary justification to conduct this
observation is to show that patent is not only to answer the healthcare needs of the
developed world population, but also the developing world. As such the thesis argues
that India ought to stand at the forefront again, this time, demonstrating the potential
within patent to establish low cost patented pharmaceuticals marketplace in
developing countries.
