Second, they have been directed at countries with strong generic drugs industries, capable of producing low-cost copies of patented drugs. Third, the aim is to overturn national legislation allowing governments to give priority to affordable medicine for the poor over the patent rights of drugs companies. All of which raises some disturbing questions about world trade rules and public health. Ultimately, patents are a contract between inventors and the rest of society. Inventors are rewarded for the commercial risk they take with a temporary monopoly, lasting 20 years under WTO rules, during which they have the right to sell their inventions at whatever price they choose.
Governments have to balance potential conflicts between the public good and private monopoly.
The wrong balance is being struck. This year 11 million people in developing countries will die from preventable infectious diseases, many of them because they are unable to afford basic medicines. More stringent patent protection threatens to make such medicines even less affordable. The facts speak for themselves. In India, companies market ciprofloxacin, an anti-infective drug used in the treatment of bloody diarrhea, at one eighth of the price charged in Pakistan, where only the patented version is available.