1. Restrict the development and innovation of medical technology: The purpose of medical patents is to encourage innovation and research and development of new drugs and treatments. However, excessive protection of medical patents may restrict other researchers and companies from further research and innovation with existing knowledge, thus hindering the development of medical technology.
2. Obstructing the popularization and accessibility of drugs: Patent protection gives pharmaceutical companies the power to monopolize the market, making it impossible for other companies to produce the same drugs and compete with them during the patent period, which may lead to high prices of innovative drugs and bring economic burdens and obstacles to many patients.
3. Abuse of patent rights to extend the patent term: Some pharmaceutical companies may abuse patent rights and extend the patent term by strategically maintaining invalid patents, further delaying the time for other companies to produce similar drugs. This kind of abuse does not conform to the original intention of the patent system and should be restricted and cracked down.
Significance of medical patent protection to enterprise development
As an R&D pharmaceutical company, it takes a long process to develop a new drug-preliminary development, laboratory testing, clinical trials and putting it on the market. Each of the above links needs a lot of capital investment (the cost of capital may be as high as several billion) to maintain a good innovative new drug to be sold in the market and earn profits.
In the whole development process, it is not always smooth sailing. Once technical problems are encountered, the project cycle may be infinitely prolonged, and the amount of capital investment will further increase. Moreover, there are also great risks in drug research and development. First of all, the income is not proportional to the input. Sometimes, the huge investment of money, time and material resources may also be caused by the failure of research and development, which leads to all the investment being wiped out in an instant.
Secondly, because most countries adopt the principle of patent application, rather than the principle of invention time, when many companies develop the same new drug at the same time, only one company can obtain the patent right, while other companies can only give up the drug they developed or obtain the right to use the drug by paying a huge patent license fee, which is undoubtedly equivalent to the failure of research and development, making all previous efforts go to waste.
In view of the characteristics of high investment and high risk in the pharmaceutical industry, applying for patent protection has become the most effective way to prohibit other enterprises from producing and selling their own drugs through exclusive rights or realizing their own profits through patent licensing.