Essay On Patent Systems

The case consists of two major pharmaceutical companies that joint to collaborate their research and pharmaceutical technologies to start a joint venture in India. Both have valuable resources that have benefited both companies during the joint venture. Now both are questioning if there is still any value in maintaining the joint venture in India and will be deciding what will be the best route to take. Ranbaxy Laboratories wants to be bought out, but Eli Lilly is worried of the financial implications of such move.

Economic: Globalization of the pharmaceutical industry is an exciting opportunity to have research and development done at cheaper prices in other countries. However, this could be a double edged sword for companies because it is easy for other countries, such as India, to produce generic versions of the drug in bulk.

Eli Lilly’s decision to create a joint venture was not surprising (figure 1). The India government limited foreign direct investment to 51%, importing was subject to manufacturing at high costs outside the country and then paying high importation tariffs, and licensing was not prudent due to an absolute lack of product patents laws that were needed to protect Eli Lilly’s intellectual property.

In “Patenting Life,” Michael Crichton argues that the government is mishandling the patenting office with the awarding of patents for human genes. Gene patenting is blocking the advancement of modern medicine and could be costing many patients their lives. The hold on research results in the discovery of fewer cures for modern diseases.

U.S. based companies hold rights to most of the world’s rights on new medicines and holds thousands of new products currently being developed. As of 2012, the industry helps support almost 3.4 million jobs in the U.S. economy. It is also one of the most heavily R&D based industries in the world. In the United States, the environment for pharmaceuticals is much friendlier than other countries around the world in terms of pricing ability and regulations. Both the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology industries have experienced significant growth in the past year with year-over-year increases of 13.02% and 34.69% respectively. It is an even more striking when looking at the past five years considering both have beat out the S&P 500 with pharmaceuticals increasing an additional 31.44% and the biotechnology sector besting an astonishing 269.3% more return than the

This casebook concentrates on the negative effects that the pharmaceutical industry’s trade and production policies have on third world nations suffering from disease epidemics. My position is that pharmaceutical companies are not concerned with the health benefits of their drugs, but rather with the market that their drugs generate. I illustrate this notion by describing the trade policies that pharmaceutical companies influence and the pharmaceutical companies’ production policies which concentrate on producing life-style drugs rather than drugs that cure life-threatening diseases.

What if a company could privately own something that naturally occurred in a body. Not some foreign object put into someone, but something that's part of their DNA. Now what if they had a deadly disease and were not allowed to donate their tissue for research because a company owned that specific disease gene. A Harvard graduate, Michael Crichton, who wrote “Patenting Life” and American Enterprise Institute scholar, John E. Calfee, who wrote “Decoding The Use Of Gene Patents”, argue the pros and cons of gene patenting. Crichton and Calfee disagree on the major key points on gene patenting.

We live in a world where most humans act like sheep following the herd; most people would rather follow the crowd rather than think for themselves. From cheating on an exam to copying other people’s ideas, that seems to be the norm in our society: most people want the easy way out for everything, as thinking is actually hard to do. So for the very few people who do put effort into thinking and use their creativity to develop novel ideas and implement them through the commercialization of a product or service, they have to be rewarded so that all their effort, time, and money aren’t spent in vain.

There are advantages of starting a pharmaceutical firm in India. It has emerged from being an enzyme-producing firm to a biotech powerhouse under the guidance of Ms Kiran M. Shaw. They have a well-established pharmaceutical industry that has been growing since 1947. After the purchase of Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd. and India Drug and Pharmaceuticals Ltd. they were able to compete with the MNC’s (Multi National Corporaton) from overseas (Kalegaonkar, Locke, Lehrich, 2008, p. 2). In the beginning the pharmaceutical industry saw substantial growth. “By the beginning of the 21st century, over 20,000 pharmaceutical companies were operating in India” (Kalegaonkar, Locke, Lehrich, 2008, p. 2). “The pharmaceutical industry in India is ranked third

The U.S. constitution gave Congress the power to “ promote the devellopment of the useful arts” by granting exclusive rights to inventers for a limited period of time. The purpose of a patent was to assurre the rights of the creators in exchange for not keeping these inventions secret, thus overall knowledge base grows.

Drug prices are set by pharmaceutical companies to cover research and development costs. While R&D costs clearly need to be covered, markets in developed countries already pay for most R&D of new products. Because of this, it makes moral and economical sense to establish a two-tiered pricing system; for R&D costs to be paid for by developed countries, allowing significantly reduced prices to be charged in developing countries.

Eli Lilly was approached by a leading pharmaceutical firm in India to consider building a joint venture together. Ranbaxy Laboratories began as a family business in the 1960’s, but with strong entrepreneurial skills the company grew to become one of the largest manufacturers for bulk drugs and generic drugs. The two companies considered pursuing a joint venture that would support on another’s products by supplying one other with ingredients to complete company products without having to trade with other companies internationally. The JV would potentially lead both companies, together to become a dominant force in the Indian market.

Further more, with other benefits such as low costs in research and development, strong clinical research capabilities, and low sovereign risk, Australia is advancing as one of the most prominent players in the pharmaceutical industry (Productivity Commission 2003). Australia’s population represents 0.3% of the world’s population and consumes around 1% of the total global pharmaceutical sales. The industry generated a total revenue of $6.1 billion in the year 2002 (ALRC 2014).

This report provides an analytical strategic review of the global pharmaceutical industry; its origin, evolution,

As the pharmaceutical giants from US, Germany and Japan take advantage of the knowledge clusters in China, India and Singapore, the domestic firms in these emerging economies also catch up through the knowledge spillovers and human resource poaching.