Article published in HUMANITAS ONLINE No 48 March 2010
http://www.fundacionmhm.org/revista.html
Promoting research and innovation has traditionally used different instruments. Patents are one of these instruments and, perhaps, the most widespread, but not unique.
instruments for the promotion of innovation used in many economies throughout history have been:
1. Public funding of research. The national funding of medical research of basic nature are a good example of this instrument.
2. AWARDS AND PURCHASE OF PATENTS. For example, in 1714, after a maritime accident caused the death of 2,000 sailors on the coast of England, the British government established a reward of ₤ 20,000 for the invention of a method for determining longitude at sea. This award led to the development of the chronometer.
3. PATENTS, such as those that currently protect the new drugs in many countries.
Any patent creates a legal monopoly, the laboratory ensures innovator the exclusive right to use and sell the innovation for a fixed period of years. During the period of validity of the patent nobody else can make and sell the product protected by patent, unless to do so with your permission. Thus, it is during this period of protection of the jurisdiction conferred upon the patent for which the laboratory must recover fixed and sunk costs relating to expenditure on innovation and development (R & D) of the product. Once you have completed this period of protection obtained legally through the patent, any competitor can copy and produce the same drug, so it is possible that the innovator faces then a large number of competitors and the costs of market entry have virtually disappeared (open access to information on innovation).
However, being necessary and essential to encourage pharmaceutical innovation, patents, despite its large size and outreach, policy is far from perfect from the standpoint of social welfare.
An alternative to patents as an instrument to support research is the public funding of research through institutions like the National Institutes of Health U.S. or the Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Spain.
Put yourself in the Instead of a private company that managed to find the information needed to produce a new active substance. If the use of this information there is no possibility of exclusion (no other use could prevent the information at no cost to bring to market new active ingredient) and no rivalry in use (anyone can use the same information), you never have invested in getting the discovery.
Since the private sector will not invest for innovations that after discovered immediately become public property, a policy to encourage the development of such innovations is to make the public sector finances R & D.
How efficient is public funding and policy to promote innovation? The public sector has difficulty in selecting research projects with greater social and motivate researchers to direct their efforts towards the development of viable projects.
Until the first half of the nineteenth century, the awards were widely used as an alternative to patents and public funding to create incentives for innovation. For example, when Napoleon was faced with the need to find a new way to deliver food to his troops established a prize or reward that led to the development of tins. During the first half of the nineteenth century, when rewards or awards patents and share the territory of the incentives for innovation, we can find a very interesting example that combines both systems through the purchase of a patent: the case of the daguerreotype.
The incentives for the development of new vaccines, especially against malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, offers a useful example for discussion on alternatives to patents. The reality seems to indicate that in the case of some diseases like the above patents have not been enough to get incentives, at least for several years, research in keeping with the high social and economic costs malaria, tuberculosis and HIV / AIDS.
Private research in vaccines such as those that could be developed against these diseases is limited not only by the poverty of potential customers, but also by the inability of innovators to obtain appropriate the value of the benefits that produce vaccines.
addition, governments use the purchasing power, regulation and intellectual property rights to maintain low prices for vaccines. Several governments are striving to reduce the price of vaccines and limit intellectual property rights applied to vaccines by producing or importing generic drugs. This strategy is useful in ensuring that the high prices associated with patents fall but discourages investment in R & D and delays the discovery of new vaccines.
If private investment and patents are insufficient to encourage discovery of new vaccines that affect a large number of people living in poverty and if we are to avoid the inefficiency associated with public research, what can you do to promote these innovations?
Michael Kremer (professor of economics at Harvard University) has released the initial proposal of commitments to purchase a certain quantity of vaccine at a price. The idea is simple in theory and based on the creation market incentives, although probably more difficult to implement in practice.
The government (or a private foundation) may make public a commitment to purchase a certain amount of a vaccine to a certain price, in the event that it was invented. The commitment could take the form of a contract (number of vaccines and price per person immunized, not per dose of vaccine) through which prospective adopting a commitment to purchase an innovative future to develop a vaccine that meets a set of requirements (eg approval by the Food and Drug Administration-FDA-American and a minimum efficiency of 80%). The buyer could vaccine available to less developed countries in exchange for a small co-related with income level.
research programs funded by the public sector may be suitable for basic research, but more applied stages of research, called Kremer and by pull programs "are more appropriate. These provide researchers and pharmaceutical companies strong incentives to self-select projects that are reasonably likely to be able to develop a useful product, and to focus on the development of a vaccine or medicine feasible instead to pursue other objectives. Finally, Pull programs "designed properly can help ensure that if new products are developed, they reach those most in need.
To purchase commitments that encourage innovation, potential producers should be confident that the sponsor will not try to renegotiate the agreement once it has developed the desired product and has incurred sunk costs. The courts consider that such liabilities are legal contracts that are enforceable. Assuming proper legal wording, the determinant of credibility will be more eligibility criteria and prices that financial funds are physically placed in separate accounts. The credibility of the purchase commitment can be increased by specifying the criteria for who is eligible (eligibility) and pricing of vaccines in advance and isolating those who must interpret the criteria of political influence.
0 comments:
Post a Comment