COMPULSORY LICENSING OF PHARMACEUTICAL PATENTS AS AN EFFECTIVE INSTRUMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Jurimetrics. Covid-19 pandemic. Sustainable development. Pharmaceutical patents. Compulsory Licensing.
Public health emergencies, such as the one caused by the pandemic of the new coronavirus, scientific name SARS-CoV-2, called Covid-19, cause transversal damage to sustainable development by causing wide-ranging socioeconomic impacts. Faced with such situations, accessibility to pharmaceutical products, such as vaccines and medicines, becomes urgent, which can be harmed by the legal protection granted to patents. Thus, the present work investigates whether the compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical patents is an effective instrument to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on sustainable development, identifying legal and socioeconomic parameters that make the adoption of the measure feasible for this purpose. For this purpose, I used the hypothetical-deductive approach method and bibliographic and documentary research techniques. First, I analyzed the theoretical discussions on the two main categories that are part of the hypothesis: sustainable development and the legal regime for pharmaceutical patents. From the theoretical references, I applied jurismetry, statistical methods applied to Law, to quantitatively analyze the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on sustainable development, the characteristics of the market structure in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry, and the panorama of relative patents technologies used in vaccines and medicines to fight the pandemic. Based on the analysis of theoretical discussions and empirical evidence, I concluded that it was feasible for the Brazilian federal government to adopt the compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical patents to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 on sustainable development, in certain circumstances, according to the outlined legal and socioeconomic parameters.