Deepika C
Student of 4th Year B.A, B.L (Hons.), School of Excellence in Law,
Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Chennai.
Abstract
The field of Intellectual Property has vastly had effects on the industrial development across the world in all countries ranging from the most developed countries to those that are the least developed. The legal protection over new creations has started to advocate commitment towards additional resources for further innovation spurring economic growth, creating new jobs and industries and enhancing the quality of life. In particular, the concept of Patents has promoted the establishment, promotion and protection of industries encouraging competition for inventing and innovating products suited for societal needs. The rewards bestowed by the Patent system act as an incentive to researchers and inventors to continue producing better and efficient products for consumers. This creates the necessity of Research and Development for the purpose of betterment of products. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) has major areas of impact on pharmaceutical industries. The extent of expenditure on research and development plays a major role in fixing the price of the pharmaceutical products, the drugs. The availability of information of an advanced nature on diagnostic technologies and genetics has transformed the pharmaceutical research methods over the years. This has had an impact on bringing in experiments on animals to test effectiveness of the product. Testing on animals raises various issues such as ethical implications, subjecting animals to pain, disease and discomfort unnaturally while there is a great probability that the test results from animals may not be the same as those that will be obtained when directed on humans. Testing on animals over a prolonged period of time also leads to bio-diversity concerns for the simple fact that only a few species are preferred for being subjected to testing which will have adverse effects on their population in the long run.
Keywords: Intellectual Property Rights, Pharmaceutical research, Testing on animals, Price fixation, bio-diversity concerns
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