Canada Finds Patents No Help For Poorest In Need Of Medicine

[Editor’s Note on 3 November: the report appears to be restricted access] Canada’s National Bureau of Economic Research today released a report on the relationship between patent protection for pharmaceuticals and investment in development of new drugs since the negotiation of the 1994 World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The NBER report “Investments in Pharmaceuticals Before and After TRIPS” found that patent protection is associated with increases in research and development in developed countries, but “the introduction of patents in developing countries has not been followed by greater investment.” Particularly for diseases primarily affecting the poorest countries, NBER said, “our results suggest that alternative mechanisms for inducing R&D may be more appropriate than patents.”

NBER paper is available here by subscription [PDF].