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The effects of stronger protection of intellectual property rights for medicines on pharmaceutical market, price and utilisation: case studies for five countries

Jung, Youn 1 Kwon, Soonman 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Since the introduction of Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights(TRIPs)in 1995, comprehensive and strict standards for patent on pharmaceuticals havebeen generally applied to all WTO member countries. Furthermore, other bilateralor multilateral trade agreements, in which stronger protection of intellectual propertyright is guaranteed than in TRIPs, have been exacerbating the monopoly ofpharmaceutical market. However, there are considerable controversies over whetherstrengthening intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals would contribute to theimprovement of public health, and there are limited empirical studies over thisissue. This study tries to examine the effects of stronger protection of intellectualproperty rights for medicines, using the cases of five countries: Jordan, India,Mexico, Australia and South Korea, specifically focusing on each country's changein pharmaceutical market structure, price and utilisation of medicines. Our studyshowed that all five countries were forced to implement stronger protection ofintellectual property rights as the result of trade agreement with other countries andthese policy changes affected domestic pharmaceutical market with the level ofpharmaceutical price, even though they had quite different history of the development of pharmaceutical industry and health care policies before the policychange. In addition, each country adopted different coping strategies to deal withthe change of pharmaceutical market, which emerged from the stronger patentprotection.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.