Discussion On Pharmaceutical Patent Restriction And Coping With Public Health Crisis

Numerous fresh lives die from SARS to bird flu, which not only questions our government contingency ability, but also questions the current drug administration system. In the face of similar crisis, how our law can provide rapid processing is a problem.Appropriate protection of drug patents is quite important to maintain the public health, but drug patent protection is not limitless. Patent protection is not the ultimate goal we are pursuing, which is just a way to promote social welfare.Drug patents and health rights own different function and range. They both can increase human benefits in different conditions, but since there are different interest bodies, conflicting interests exist between them.We can see the dice game between patent rights and public health right, the developed countries and the developing countries, and the least developed countries from the international treaty's development process. Along with the development of international economic situation, people's understanding about the connotation and boundary of human rights and intellectual property rights has changed. People wish to achieve the balance between patentee benefits and global public health benefits through the restriction on drug patent. However, because of people's different expectations of their respective interests, this kind of balance and coordination is temporary and conforms to the immediate environment, which constantly changes with the times change.On the analysis of the type of domestic pharmaceutical patent infringement cases and the attitude of domestic law and cases to pharmaceutical patent protection, the author puts forward some suggestions in order to achieve good balance between drug patents and public health. The first, relative department should be prudent in policy making with drug patent protection problem; The second, we should perfect the current drug license system; The third, we shall consider introducing implied license system; The forth, reasonable use generics to resolve the current crisis; The fifth, the judge should fully realize the particularity of drug patents in judicial practice; The sixth, we should rationally explain the "no infringement litigation system".