Pharmaceutical R&D needs new financial paradigms

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, October, 2004 by John H. Barton

I endorse Professor Correa's sound recommendations on patent law. The patent system is at its most successful when it covers a significant discrete product or process. It is at its least successful when it covers something much broader or much narrower. Patents on broad scientific principles are generally bad, because in the words of the United States Supreme Court, they "may confer power to block off whole areas of scientific development, without compensating benefit to the public" (1). At the other end of the continuum, patents on very minor improvements create a monopoly out of proportion to the technological benefit of the improvement. Moreover, such patents may impose extensive and costly legal negotiations on those who wish to have the freedom to launch a new product....