Understanding Patent Pools for Global Health: Assessing Their Value in Promoting Access to Essential Medicines

In response to a lack of access to essential medicines in the developing world, a number of mechanisms have developed that aim to promote greater access to essential medicines, particularly antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS and drugs for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases. These mechanisms operate in a variety of different ways, but share a common theme in that they all ultimately aim to provide affordable drugs to patients in resource-poor settings. However, the existing mechanisms to facilitate increased access to essential medicines all have a number of cons. Patent pools represent a novel approach to facilitating access and have the potential to go beyond the status quo in terms of the various alternatives.

This paper aims to analyze patent pools for global health and whether such novel mechanisms can facilitate greater access to antiretroviral medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS and drugs for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases in developing countries. Two patent pools in particular⎯the Medicines Patent Pool and WIPO's Re:Search Consortium⎯are evaluated and compared to existing mechanisms that aim to accomplish the same or similar goals.