Impacts of the protection of Intellectual Property Rights: A Special Reference to the violation of the Right to Life

The drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obviously forgot to take into consideration the situation that prevailed in most newly independent nations which are the developing nations of today. In this short piece, I would like to highlight one such incident especially with reference to India and in doing so, would highlight a conflict within the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt couldn’t have probably ever imagined this conflict that is plaguing most developing nations today.

India is said to be the Pharmacy of the world, although most of the pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the manufacture of generic drugs. With relatively less investment in Research and Development and the demand for cheap drugs, doesn’t seem to encourage the production the patented drugs which is more of a trend in the countries of the north. This disability cannot be only attributed to the laziness of many Indians but more to the nature of the Indian Economy.

While the West is a more Capital Intensive economy, acquiring most of its wealth during the Industrial Revolution, Indian Economy is more of a Resource Intensive Economy with a thrust towards the service sectors. This leaves little or no scope for research and development. Here I would like to quote the example of Microsoft and Infosys; both were started at a similar time. While Infosys has become more of a service firm, innovating for its American clients; Microsoft has become a world leader in Information Technology. Much of this success could be attributed to the high amount of funds that these western nations have acquired by exploiting relatively smaller nations, which they can invest in education as well as research and development and indirectly to attract talent from these developing nations, which then starts the entire brain-drain chain.

The fact is, we in a developing nation like India don’t have enough capital to invest in research and development. Same is the case with the Pharmaceutical Industry, while there is not enough funds for research and development; the demand for cheap and affordable healthcare has given rise to the entire Generic Drug industry.

The access to cheap and affordable healthcare is a basic human right. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” If healthcare is available but inaccessible, it is a violation of this particular article. Let me make it more clear, in the case of developed nations who have very good social security programs, costly drugs and healthcare is provided to the people. So, even if a patented drug is very costly, the people in developed nations have access to it, since their Governments are able to provide for their healthcare. In the case of developing nations, where patented drugs are unaffordable, generic drugs are the most natural and obvious alternative. Now, when these developed nations are pushing for ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ by quoting Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it states that- “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interest resulting from any scientific, literary and artistic production of which he is the author.” The conflict with reference to accessibility of healthcare in developing nations is clearly visible here and it is a violation of the “Right to Life” (Article 6) of the people, of the developing nations.

Another practice that is followed by many of the western drug manufacturing companies is the “Evergreening process”. Since patents expire after a fixed time period (India- 20yrs, US- 17yrs etc), many of these companies have adopted a practice whereby they change a patented drug minutely at the molecular level without much difference in the efficacy, and thereby retain the patent for another term. It is extremely shameful that these western corporate pay no heed to the “Right to Life” of the citizens of the developing nations and are trying to make a business out of it. Such instances establish such declaration and documents, only but a tool of these hegemonic powers to maintain their hegemony. The Cultural Imperialism factor on any case has always been there which promotes these declarations and documents.

It is high time that the choice between ‘Right to Life’ and the ‘Right to Intellectual Property’ is clearly made. Given the Indian Scenario, a step in my opinion has already been taken, with reference to the Novartis case. Although the stance is still not clear, yet it is a very progressive step in the nations of the South to tackle monopoly by western pharma companies in the respective field.

The decision of the Supreme Court of India in the Novartis case in 2008 which involved a leukemia drug called Glivec was a welcome relief for health activists. Novartis was involved in basically Evergreening Glivec. Glivec is a drug whose patented version costs Rs. 1.2 lacs for a single dose while a generic version would cost only Rs. 8000 for a single dose. The decision of the Supreme Court though upset these Western Powers, who defamed India as a bad country for investment as it did not respect intellectual property rights. The US Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Rights Center (Download Report: http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/India_Outlier_FIN.pdf), the World Intellectual Property Rights Organization (WIPO) all published exclusive reports on the grave situation of Intellectual Property Rights in India.

We in these developing nations have always have had to bear the brunt. It is high time that people need to wake up to such injustice.