Compulsory licensing in intellectual property

In this patent pooling structure, by having the parties pool their patents together for research and development, there is a renewed scope toward third-party licensing, transparency, negotiations in equitable pricing and royalty-distribution avenues. Further, patent pools also ensure a certain degree of product homogeneity, resulting in a similar quality of vaccine being developed across the board.

This might ensure that the same quality of vaccine is distributed to all the nations in an equitable fashion. Ordinarily, individually developed vaccines will require approvals for marketing and manufacture in different countries separately to ensure widespread administration of the vaccine, either by voluntary or compulsory licensing.

These transaction costs are significantly lowered in a patent pool, which makes all of the required patent rights and information available on a non-exclusive, non-discriminatory basis to all countries and manufacturers alike.

Despite these advantages, patent holders are less enthusiastic about such pools in the biotechnology industry due to non-alignment of interests among diverse innovative entities. In the course of fostering innovative technology, companies with breakthrough innovations will most likely be be unwilling to share such breakthroughs with rivals.

Encouraging profit-driven private entities to share their technology with one another is undeniably the biggest hurdle in the creation of a patent pool. However, private companies stand to gain from patent pools, where there is the possibility of issuing a greater number of licenses, thereby earning royalties on a greater number of developed units with the broader manufacturing and distribution base potentially available under a patent pool.

While these reasons serve as incentives for private parties to collaborate with one another, there is also a threat of them working together to monopolize the market and indulge in price-fixing. Medicine procurement and the use of flexibilities in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, — Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

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In cases of emergency and necessity. Upon request of the Minister of Health in order to address situations where there is shortage of certain medications or where prices charged are excessive. In this case, the person seeking the patent license bears the burden to prove that it has seriously pursued and negotiated for the said license. If the patent holder abused its rights by charging excessive prices, limiting or refusing to supply a medication, committing anticompetitive practices.

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