China Permits Duplication of Life-saving Drugs at Lower Price
By Albert Chen
According to the report of South China Morning Post, the latest revised Measures for the Compulsory Licensing for Patent Implementation (the “Measures”), which has come into effect from 1st May of 2012, China government may sign the compulsory license to the manufacture of the cheap copy of the patent drugs when in the urgency or exceptional conditions of the state, or for the public interests.
Also in the report, it points out that the action by China government is an alert to the world pharmacy industry when China is a prominent part to the global medicine market; especially currently we see a decline in the western countries. Meanwhile, the news also says, for the past decades, many Chinese medicine makers have been manufacturing the important drug ingredient exported to foreign counterparts, who however would afterwards sell the patent medicine made with the aforesaid ingredients to China at a high price which is hardly affordable to Chinese patients. Now China has been focused on its wrestling with foreign drug makers, especially as known, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria will no longer grant donation of AIDs prevention to China from 2013.