Journal of Intellectual Property Rights

Padmavati Manchikanti ¹, Michelle Dias ¹

Affiliations
1 Rajiv Gandhi School of IP Law, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur – 721 302, West Bengal,, IN

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled a relook at public healthcare and the patent systems. It has brought to halt livelihoods with devastating consequences to people’s lives national economies. Global health security is at stake as there is a need to develop and deploy more vaccines, repurpose medicines and increase medical infrastructure support. Collaboration and collective response is imperative at international and national levels. IPR access is crucial in relation to public health. Many countries have issued new policies and enacted laws to make it easier for them to supply medicines to their population during the pandemic. Compulsory licensing has been used as an important mechanism to open up IP without the permission of patent holders. The present study analyses amendments to patent law and IP legislations that are effected from a cross country perspective during the pandemic time. It also examines international cooperation in the context of public health and IP under the TRIPS Agreement in view of the on-going consultation at the WTO. The study reveals differences in approaches to ‘governmental use’ of patents and access to know-how under the statutory framework. Improving the scope of use of products and process patents, suspension of patent term extension, consolidating the compulsory licensing mechanism, removal of inequity are the predominant aspects that are part of the amendments to patent law in the countries. Pandemics like COVID-19 need legislative initiatives to secure healthcare system access for all citizens. Healthcare access includes ready availability of basic vaccines, drugs, medical devices and medical infrastructure. There is often a clash between access to healthcare as a fundamental right on one hand and the need to award monopolies in the form of IP rights as an incentive for innovations from the pharmaceutical industry on the other. Hence, obstacles arise in decision-making to balance innovation incentives and ensuring rights to access healthcare. Judicial decision-making and public policy-making have been always at the centre stage in earlier epidemics and now in the current pandemic making it imperative for countries to protect the health interests of their citizens.

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Priyanka Tiwari ¹, Uppala Shailaja ¹, Niharika Sahoo Bhatacharya ¹, Padmavati Manchikanti ¹

Affiliations
1 Rajiv Gandhi School of IP law, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur — 721 302, West Bengal, IN

Abstract

Mobile health also referred to as mHealth is a broader term that includes mobile computing, medical sensor, communication technologies, and other wireless technologies associated with healthcare. Mobile health apps are becoming more popular due to their varied applications and have the potential to greatly improve the healthcare segment in any country. In this context, the present study attempts to provide a comprehensive picture of innovation trends in mHealth domain through patent landscape analysis. Further, it attempts to identify the major challenges with respect to patenting and protecting innovation in India. The analysis shows that there is an upward trend in patenting since 2002 onwards, and in addition to big private entities, start-ups and academic institutions are also having a major contribution to innovations in mHealth sector. However, there are inherent challenges in patenting an ICT technology which was also evident in our study with respect to selected mHealth app patents. A concerted effort in enhancing IPR capture as well as appropriate support mechanism is the need of the hour to promote and effectively implement mHealth in the country.

Keywords

Mobile Healthcare, mHealth, Health Technology, Digital Health, Wearable Sensor, Smart Health Monitoring.

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