The plot of the film Dying seems to have caused some misunderstandings among the public. They believe that although patented drugs "save lives", "life-saving drugs" are also "sky-high drugs" and "life-killing drugs" for patients. Some people even think that the culprit of "high-priced drugs" lies in the patent protection of drugs. Since 1984 promulgated the patent law in China, the role of patent system in promoting the formation, transformation and protection of innovation achievements has become more and more obvious. For example, China has broken the monopoly of foreign patented drugs in the fields of leukemia and anticancer drugs, effectively alleviating the people's medication difficulties. However, it is in these medical fields that some patented drugs are overpriced, which leads to many misunderstandings about patent protection. It is believed that patent monopoly leads to the existence of "high-priced drugs". It is worth thinking about why in the medical field, people deliberately ignore the incentive effect of patent protection on innovation, and pay more attention to patent protection of drugs, which will hinder patients from obtaining "life-saving drugs" at low prices. In my opinion, this may be related to the particularity of the medical field. This particularity is reflected in: the research and development cycle of drugs is long, the investment is large and the risk is high, especially in the research and development of new drugs, which means that the research and development cycle of new drugs generally takes 10 years and costs 10 billion dollars; At the same time, the long approval time of drug clinical trials and the large consumption of drug patent protection period will inevitably affect the opportunity of innovative drugs to seize the market.
On the one hand, the high investment and high risk of drug research and development need the patent system to ensure that its early R&D investment can get a reasonable return, otherwise no pharmaceutical company is willing to do new drug research and development; On the other hand, the special role of drugs in treating diseases and saving lives requires drug developers and producers to be more convenient and benefit the people, otherwise it will also violate the ultimate goal of drug research and development.
Faced with these seemingly contradictory two aspects, what should we do?
The author believes that this problem should be treated dialectically. For the protection of innovative drugs, in order to stimulate the innovation power of innovative pharmaceutical companies and ensure that generic pharmaceutical companies have "drugs that can be copied" and patients have "drugs to eat", patent protection should be strictly enforced, and relevant systems should be improved in view of the problems existing in practice, such as short actual protection period and long time for listing approval. In view of the phenomenon of "high-priced drugs", we can ensure that patients can obtain "high-priced drugs" at a more affordable price by increasing investment in research and development in the medical field, improving the medical security system, putting an end to unreasonable price increases in drug circulation, and encouraging imitation pharmaceutical factories to actively imitate them.
Therefore, for drugs, innovative drugs are still the foundation, and the crux of "high-priced drugs" is not patent protection.
(Beijing Anjie Law Firm Chen Zhixing) Excerpted from People's Daily Online.
Hope to adopt, thank you.