Patent Pooling use amidst pandemic
COVID-19 as an unprecedented event has made people to constantly innovating on every sector. Nowadays technological advancement facilitates every action around the world. Numerous pharmaceutical companies have to provide extra effort at full speed, to fulfill people needs in health sector. In this particular situation, patent pooling is a recommended to face health crisis like pandemic.
Patent Pooling can be defined as an agreement between two or more patent owners to license their patent to one another or to third party. The agreement is a License Agreement. Frequently, Patent Pooling is linked to a complex technology which requires a complementary to provide an efficient technical solution. Generally, Patent Pooling covers a mature technology. Patent pooling also represent basic industrial standard that supplies companies with a required technology for developing a compatible products and services. In that case, they often provide more attention to an under developed technology.
Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a United Nation-blackened international organization, Established on 2010 in Geneva Switzerland. MPP founded by Unitaid to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies that could facilitate generic manufacturer.
Last couple of years, MPP had negotiated license agreements that made low-income countries to obtain treatment for HIV, TB, and Hepatitis C. On 2019 MPP estimated to helped many countries with a total of 210 million USD through medicine.
Amidst pandemic, MPP helped to gather patent information for products that has clinically tested, such as antiviral, remdesivir, and biologic tocilizumab in various countries. MPP also stated that they have provided the above medicine through their online database, MedsPaL. It is a platform established for countries and pharmaceutical countries to identify unlicensed patent that could possibly blocking access to new innovation.
Product distribution and innovative solution in a form of patent pooling may support innovation and enhance access to medicines that save lives. Below are advantages of patent pooling amidst COVID-19 pandemic:
- Patent pooling could ensure Research & Development (R&D) towards medicines which play significant role in COVID-19 pandemic and also transparent and compliant to regulations especially in intellectual property.
- Patent pooling enables companies to produce medicine/vaccine by combining distinct medicines to create a better medicine/vaccine.
- Patent pooling also helps the cooperation between big pharmaceutical companies and generic companies globally to produce the required medicine.
- Patent pooling enables to give an immediate licensing across several manufacturers leading to quick availability of medicine/vaccine.
Sources:
- https://www.mondaq.com/india/patent/976980/medicine-patent-pool-mpp-and-its-role-in-battling-covid-19
- https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/adf9e5f8-acee-4ce8-add9-0d47a1c16940.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1609992780&Signature=dBVAcRlcsvPha2%2BU51wOp9hZdOk%3D
