Patentes de medicamentos: aspectos da proteção legal e do acesso universal à saúde no contexto pandêmico atual

Abstract

This work seeks to analyze the relationship between intellectual property and public health within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to understand how the intellectual property rights protection system can impose obstacles to universal access to health. Therefore, initially we seek to present basic considerations regarding the right to intellectual property and patents, bringing their concepts and how both are treated by international and national legal systems. Once this is done, we move on to the study of how the referred system is intrinsically related to the economic and, mainly, technological development of the countries, demonstrating how it contributes to the continued dependence on technology transfer from developing countries to developed countries. From this, it seeks to raise the hypotheses admitted by the international legal system of flexibilization of the protection of intellectual property which, in turn, can be used by the States as instruments to meet their internal demand for access to technology, especially that of high level of complexity, such as the technology used in the pharmaceutical industry - a fact that proves to be of paramount importance in dealing with public health emergency situations. Finally, based on the context of the declaration of a national and international public health emergency as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we analyze how these easing measures are being used by the countries, including Brazil, to guarantee access for their populations to treatment and prevention technologies used against this disease, seeking to demonstrate whether there is indeed universal and equitable access to medicines and vaccines against COVID-19 through the collection of empirical data on global vaccination. The research method used was deductive, in an attempt to make the general rules the solution for specific cases, with emphasis on the use of historical research, especially on the evolution of international and national legislation over time.