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GLOBAL HEALTH INNOVATION: EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF PATENT POOLING STRATEGIES IN THE PANDEMIC ERA

December 15, 2023

* Ms. Immidisetty Navya Raga Sravani

Introduction

The concept of patent pooling for the innovations is a very important mechanism which helps to press the healthcare needs. The patent pooling helps too strike balance between Intellectual property Rights and the public interest. During pandemic era patent pool has a revolutionary impact. The study is about investigating the importance of the patent pooling techniques and methods with influencing the future healthcare in the post pandemic era. This complete study has put the intellectual property, public health and international cooperation in one line.

Patent Pools

Patent is an incentivizing mechanism to protect the innovation created and to exploit it in all possible ways. To Cooperate and avert legal disputes between the inventors and the companies in the technological world, management of intellectual property is crucial and high priority. Patent pooling works as a framework to incentivize the several patent holders to jointly own the inventions via licensing, which helps to reduce the transaction costs & royalty rates which simultaneously enhances the Research and development i.e. R&D. Patent pooling mainly benefits the medical industry, to ace the unavailability of the medicine as they were protected under patent.

Patent Pooling – Public Health

Patent pooling significantly helps in the improving access to medical innovations and supports in addressing the healthcare concerns .India being one of the vast populated country possess many health issues to be addressed and treated, so the accessibility and cost of medications can have a direct impact on the public health, to address this patent pooling is created, it helped in sharing multiple vaccines and drugs to reduce the burden. Patent pooling unites several parties such as inventors, pharmacy companies, research centres to collaborate in the licensing process and hasten the creation of essential drugs? Patent pooling also allows multiple patent owners to pool their patents to create certain portfolios and gather all of them together, it facilitates in the cross licensing between the owners and organizations to share their patents and the revenue obtained over them. Patent pooling is recognized by WHO commissioned CIPIH i.e. Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, innovations and public health.

Whether patent pools have contributed to the increasing number of essential patents for technological standards?

Various organizations share their patents to the patent pools to create a hub of patents, so that researcher and organization can access it through paying fair royalties to inventors and agreeing to terms and conditions. In fact, patent pools have been crucial in helping vital patents proliferate, especially in terms of technological standards. Modern sectors like information technology, electronics, and telecommunications rely heavily on technological standards to ensure flawless communication and compatibility between various devices and systems. Collecting various patents from several patent holders to create Patent pools which possess key intellectual property associated with a certain technology standard. This collaborative approach is particularly common in areas where a single standard may require the compliance with multiple patents. All the participating organizations simplify the licensing procedure through the collective licensing of all necessary technologies, the participating entities can simplify the licensing procedure for manufacturers and encourage broader adoption of the standard. This is achieved by pooling these critical patents.

The cooperative approach has shown results in a number of industries, such as telecommunications, where complicated technology from multiple innovators and organizations must work together harmoniously. Patent pooling simplify the legal complications, licensing agreements and reduce the patent disputes by make bedrock for more innovations to come up and create favorable innovation environment.

Advantages of Patent Pooling:

  1. Patent pooling have high degree of protection with an aim to increase the innovations and leaving behind the legal disputes, the risk will be equally shared.
  2. Standardization this process bring different patents and their technologies together to facilitate various systems and platforms, this enhances towards the innovation.
  3. Encouraging Domestic Innovation: By promoting cooperation and knowledge sharing, patent pooling can help to establish an atmosphere that supports domestic innovation. This is crucial for tackling the particular health issues facing India's populace and encouraging the creation of solutions that are suited to their need.
  4. Patent pooling is extremely helpful to provide medical requirements to address the public health emergencies like pandemics. The place like India which have lot of population requires immediate attention to health issues/ emergencies.
  5. The patent pooling is a cost-effective process as it have the cross licensing and helps in research to reduce the working time and increase efficiency. So, it results in financial savings and coming up with the viable healthcare solutions.
  6. Legal Simplification and Better Access to medications.

How Patents Pooling helped during Pandemic

Previously there are lot of difficulties to address the public health issues in India with cooperation as a team, the pattern of patent pooling helped in solving the obstacles relating to health issues and also helps to promote development and fair distribution of required medicines. During recent Covid pandemic, access to Covid tools accelerator Programme clearly demonstrated the patent pooling benefits and effectiveness. Pandemic technology access pool is a voluntary Programme of pooling of the intellectual property. The role of both of them is to overcome issues to guarantee wide access to pandemic technologies and also established the cooperative Programme. This cooperative strategy helps to exploit the patents jointly by simplifying the license procedure for more effective and immediate addressing the needs of global community?

Conclusion

While investigating on the patent pooling and evaluating its importance during the pandemic Era. This basically emphasizes on shaping the global health. It provides route to a robust, inclusive and creative future for transforming the cooperation in public health. This path of innovation have flexibility, communication and cooperation between the members.

Suggestions

The following are some suggestions for public health-related patent pooling initiatives to encourage patent pooling:

  1. Bringing up the more global patent pools for the vaccines and medications to ace the upcoming pandemics.
  2. Create patent pooling pertaining to anti-microbial resistance to create more fresh remedies and alleviate the drug resistant infections.
  3. Coming up with portfolio centric patent pools targeting a particular illness which are pertaining to neglected tropical diseases, this will encourage the development and make it economically viable
  4. Create patent pools with pertaining to diagnostic technologies for dealing with quick test and other kits, this will provide broad access to diagnostics.
  5. Creating Data hub relating to analyze the data and exchange of patents and their surveillance for the early warning system and the building infrastructure of public health around the world.

REFERENCES:

  1. Awasthy G. Krishnan, Public Health Management: The Way Forward through Patent Pools, Volume no: 13. No.1, ISSN: 0976-3570.
  2. Esteban Burrone,Patent Pooling in Public Health, The Cambridge Handbook on Public-Private Partnerships, Intellectual Property Governance, and Sustainable Development (Chapter 5),January 1,2018
  3. Aziz- Ur- Rehman, The pharmacy of the developing world: India, Patent law and access to essential medicines, Research Gate, January 2011, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320923669_The_pharmacy_of_the_developing_world_India_patent_law_and_access_to_essential_medicines/citations.
  4. Ellen ‘t Hoen , Private Patents and Public Health- changing intellectual property Rules for access to Medicines, IN0 4006002,www.haiweb.org.
  5. Kanikaram Satyanaryana and Sadhana Srivastava, Patent Pooling for promoting Access to Antiretroviral Drugs (ARVs)- A strategic Option for India, The Open AIDS Journal, 2010, 4, 41-53.
Author:

* Ms. Immidisetty Navya Raga Sravani
4th Year Law Student, Alliance School of Law, Bangalore.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of the Alliance Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (ACIPR) and the Centre does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.