Public Health and Pharmaceutical Patents: Navigating IPR through Diverse Lenses
Author : Dr. MD Adil
Abstract :
The tension between the proprietary logic of pharmaceutical patents and the imperatives of global public health constitutes one of the most consequential jurisprudential conflicts of the twenty-first century. This article undertakes a multi-perspectival examination of intellectual property law as it applies to medicines, interrogating the TRIPS Agreement and its flexibilities through the lenses of utilitarian efficiency, human rights discourse, postcolonial critique, feminist political economy, and open-science theory. Drawing on comparative legal analysis, empirical data from compulsory licensing regimes in India, Brazil, South Africa, and Thailand, and philosophical frameworks of distributive justice, the article argues that the current patent system, while providing investment incentives, structurally forecloses access for populations in low- and middle-income countries. It further contends that reformative instruments—including the Health Impact Fund, prize mechanisms, and open-source drug development—offer viable, justice-oriented alternatives. The article concludes that legal reform must proceed from a recognition of health as a fundamental human entitlement, demanding an architecture of intellectual property law that holds innovation and equity in productive rather than antagonistic tension.
Keywords :
Pharmaceutical patents, TRIPS, access to medicines, compulsory licensing, health rights, postcolonial IP, open-source medicine, Health Impact Fund.
