Imports parallel

Pharmaceutical innovation has made a decisive contribution to the reduction of mortality and the improvement of quality of life. The role of patents in providing incentives for innovation has been crucial. Yet at the same time there are limitations that need to be overcome in the future. Here we will mention just two examples orphan drugs and parallel imports. Patents do not offer incentives to develop drugs for low-prevalence diseases, known as orphan drugs. Governments are sometimes faced with the option of public production, as the private sector does not invest in them. Yet these would be precisely the cases in which experiments would be conducted with new models for promoting innovation, as discussed in this chapter. 

The case of parallel imports presents a serious challenge for many governments, in that patent protection is unequal between countries, a fact that gives rise to trade between countries that fails to respect the necessary protection to... 

The implication of economic theory for price regulation is clear in this case policies that tend to force international prices to converge (price regulation based on comparisons between countries or parallel imports) are hkely to reduce welfare in the long run. The level of R D that can be financed would be lower with uniform prices than with Ramsey prices.613... 

Simon, H. (1987), Parallel Imports, London Collins Professional Books. 

Darba, J. and J. Rovira i Coll (1998), Parallel imports of pharmaceuticals in the European Union , PharmacoEconomics, 14 (supplement 1), 129-36. 

Losec MUPS XPharma is identical to the original and parallel imported by XPharma... 

The Pharmaceutical companies want to maximise there profit on drugs. To do this there might be price differences between markets and countries. In this case another pharmaceutical company can buy the drug in one country and sell it in another. Despite the costs for re-labelling and repacking there might be a profit for the parallel importing company. An example is shown in Table 8.1. 

Enalapril Comp XPharma is a generic copy and Renitec Comp XPharma is a parallel imported product... 

They were developed with the idea of paralleling important physico-chemical properties such as boiling point, mobility on chromatographic columns, enthalpies of formation, and total molecular surface areas. 

It should be borne in mind that European law applies a doctrine of exhaustion of rights in relation to the use of intellectual property rights. In effect, once the right has been used by its owner, for example to put a patented product on the market in a Member State, the owner may not assert that right to prevent the product moving round the Community thereafter. This principle limits the circumstances in which these rights trade in the EU for example in relation to parallel imports. 

Even between high-income countries, there are appreciable differences in prices of pharmaceutical products (Danzon and Furukawa 2003). Such differentials have led to some price arbitrage as occurs with parallel imports for example, manufacturers in Country A, with high retail prices for pharmaceutical products, exports to Country B these products with lower prices because of government regulation of the prices of such products or price discrimination, and Country B in turn exports to Country A but at the prices of Country B. 

Kristina M. Lybecker focuses on the tensions inherent in the socioeconomic construct that is today s pharmaceutical industry. On the one hand, it has a social contract to develop medicines that enhance the health of the public, but on the other it seeks to maximize profit. Lybecker explains the major challenges facing the industry today, such as longer drug development times, rising R D costs, generic competition, and parallel importation. 

The pharmaceutical marketplace has also become more crowded as innovative pharmaceutical firms compete with a growing number of generic producers as well as their own products via parallel importation. The passage of the 1984 Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (The Hatch-Waxman Act) intensified... 

Ganslandt, M., and K. E. Maskus. 2001. Parallel Imports of Pharmaceutical Products in the European Union. Policy Research Working Paper no. 2630. Washington, DC World Bank. 

TRIPS-plus provisions in FTAs regularly include limits on compulsory licensing prohibitions on parallel imports limiting market approval for generic drugs data exclusivity extended patent terms and evergreening" provisions. Since the U.S. often... 

Agreements with Singapore, Morocco, and Australia allow patent holders to contractually prevent parallel importation, while the FTAA mandates regional exhaustion within five years of signature, effectively excluding parallel imports from outside countries. These provisions will prohibit countries from importing lower-priced patented medicines sold in other countries. 

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