Why do people assume that pharma companies are going to keep generating new products? Where do you get a completely new anti-infective?" asks J Trevor Lumb, assistant general, patent counsel of research-based US pharmaceutical major, Pfizer Inc. A question, according to Lumb, opponents of product patents should ask themselves when they decry it as a precursor to monopoly and unfair drug pricing.
"There's a lot of money and time that is invested in discovery & research and not always successfully," Lumb said. "Inventors need to be rewarded."
"Patent laws should not be used as instruments of morality or public safety. Don't use patent laws as a tool to contain drug prices," he said.
Lumb, in the country to address participants of the US Investment Summit on intellectual property rights (IPR), is categorical about the function of patent laws as means to protect inventions and ensure adequate returns to the inventor and no more.
"If you want to control prices, use other mechanisms like government subsidies or price controls, but don't abolish patents just because you think prices of drugs may increase," Lumb said.
In South Africa where AIDS is rampant, the government had almost decided to abolish patents on AIDS drugs and hand out licences to local manufacturers to make drugs more affordable. But, it had to change its decision after an outcry from the pharmaceutical industry and developed countries. "They decided against this because they realised they could not use patents as a means to control prices," Lomb said. So what is the alternative? "One of the things that can be done is for governments' of developed countries to buy drugs from companies in those countries and then export them at a lesser price to countries like South Africa. This kind of government-to-government assistance is feasible. The United Nations can also step in," Lumb said.
Lumb believes that the fear of rising prices in a more stringent patent regime haunts Indians even today. "But there are products which will not be under patent. Also, differential pricing is practised all the time by pharma companies," he said.
