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Western Drug Companies

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Submitted By Maggie0726
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Question One: Why is it so important for the drug companies to protect their patents?

Answer:
In the field of medicine, people begin to focus on intellectual property. Health care related Intellectual Property Right (IPR) is deemed as a special and complex issue, which distinguishes itself from other kinds of IPR with its particular nature and different legal provisions and covers a wide range of subjects.
Firstly, medicine is a special and important field of technology. The feature of drug development is large investment, high rise and long cycle. Currently, developing a new chemical drug takes 8 to 10 billion. Moreover, it takes more than ten years to screen a drug and bring it to market. If they don’t protect their patents, new drugs that consumed significant cost will be imitation. Therefore, drug development needs more dependent on protecting patents than other sectors.
Secondly, the sustainable development of pharmaceutical industry relies on strong support of new technologies and new products. The return of new drugs is huge and it is over 30 percent of sales. So the huge return needs to be protected. Otherwise it will create duplication of research and development and waste of resources. It is easy to form a vicious marketing competition and goes against technological advances in pharmaceutical industry. For example, an anti-HIV drug successes to be researched and developed in Taiwan. It is said that the effect of prevention of AIDS is 90 percent and an injection prices as high as $2400. (Huaxiajingwei, 2004)
Thirdly, intellectual property right belongs to the property of company. So they have an obligation to protect their patents.

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