O sistema internacional de patentes no contexto da pandemia de Covid-19: a dicotomia entre o direito universal a saúde e a pirataria

Abstract

In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the disease caused by the new strain of coronavirus, called Covid-19, constituted a “Public Health Emergency of International Relevance”. In subsequent months, the new disease recorded more than 300 million cases spread across the world. This environment brought to light an unusual urgency for the development of vaccines and medicines capable of treating the disease, in addition to a gigantic demand for tests and hospital equipment while resolving measures were not found. It turns out that access to these items, especially in this urgent condition, comes up against barriers established by legislation that protects rights relating to industrial property. Considering this scenario, although quite immature, the question arises: to what extent do patent mechanisms help promote health – by ensuring that companies make investments in research and development of new patentable technologies – at the same time that they limit access to these technologies during a global pandemic? To study this issue, this research uses the hypothetical deductive methodology and aims to investigate the main impacts, in the area of health, arising from the application of the ordinary patent rule in the face of exceptional scenarios such as the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as analyze the measures proposed during their validity with the aim of ensuring global health in the future. The study is classified in the area of Emerging Law of the Global Society of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), as it proposes to critically discuss themes that present themselves as urgent and current on the global scene, such as health and intellectual property, being linked to the Sociobiodiversity and Sustainability Rights research line of the Postgraduate Program.