The Right to Health and Patents

Abstract

The debate about the relationship between intellectual property and human rights has come to be dominated by concerns about the implications of pharmaceutical products protected by patents and the negative, exclusionary, effects that may result in terms of access to medicines and the right to health as a consequence of the rights conferred on the owner of a patent. This chapter suggests three thematic clusters under which a rights-based discourse has been affected: (1) legislative change; (2) policy change; (3) judicial interpretation. The chapter concludes with a number of questions considered by the author central to the analytical frame we should use when identifying whether the global experiences of the right to health can patents can elicit lessons more widely when intellectual property rights impact adversely on other sectors of society.