Redemption of the Right to Use a Patent as a Legal Measure to Reduce the Cost of Innovative Drugs

DOI: 10.33917/es-4.162.2019.120-125

Many innovative drugs used in key therapeutic areas and in such diseases like cancer, hepatitis C, diabetes and many others are an integral part of state insurance programs and reimbursement schemes. Meanwhile, often due to the high cost of medicines and budget constraints, the need of all patients requiring treatment cannot be satisfied. This problem is extremely relevant both in industrialized countries, such as the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany and in such relatively young pharmaceutical markets like Russia. In many countries, there is a law on redemption of patent rights from manufacturers, which allows the state subsequently to provide patients with the necessary therapy almost at the drug’s cost price. However, this practice is not widespread and is really used in isolated instances, even in the leading world countries. The purpose of the present article is to substantiate the need for broad application of the scheme of the patent use redemption by the state using the example of drugs for treating hepatitis C in the USA, where this law has been functioning for many years. During the study, we analyzed the works of leading foreign authors in the field of pharmaceuticals and patent protection, as well as legislative and regulatory documents, statistical materials of international databases on the industry over the past years

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