Department of Economics, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary AB, T2N 1N4, Canada. Tel.: +1403220 5861; Fax: +1403220 5861; Email: ahollis{at}ucalgary.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract The Health Impact Fund has been proposed as an optional, comprehensive advance market commitment system offering financial payments or ‘prizes’ to patentees of new drugs, which are sold globally at an administered low price. The Fund is designed to offer payments based on the therapeutic impact (...) of the drugs or vaccines, so that innovators will have efficient incentives to develop drugs that maximize health gains. Consumers would have improved access to such drugs because of low prices. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Concerns have been voiced about the ethical implications of patenting practices in the field of biotechnology. Some of these have also been incorporated into regulation, such as the European Commission Directive 98/44 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. However, the incorporation of ethically based restrictions into patent legislation has not had the effect of satisfying all concerns. In this article, we will systematically compare the richness of ethical concerns surrounding biotech patenting, with the limited scope of ethical concerns actually (...) addressed in the patent system. As sources of our analyses we will use literature and document studies and a survey with important stakeholders and experts related to Norwegian patenting in the aquacultural biotechnology sector. We will structure the analyses with an ethical matrix, developed for this purpose. Showing the misalignment of the discussions within and outside the patent system, we suggest that an important reason for the ethical controversy still surrounding patenting is that ethical questions keep being framed in a narrow way within the system. Until a richer set of ethical considerations is addressed head-on within the patent system, the patent system will continue to evoke academic and interest group criticism, potentially contributing to a legitimacy crisis of the whole system. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge proposes the Health Impact Fund (HIF) as a realistic, feasible reform to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would incentivize pharmaceutical research and reward innovation for medicines based on their impact on the global burden of disease. Pogge advances a human rights-based argument to show that the HIF is a morally required addition to the current pharmaceutical patent regime. One objection to his human rights argument comes from a libertarian appeal to property rights. Pogge’s response to the libertarian leads (...) to the counterintuitive conclusion that libertarianism is incompatible with any system of intellectual property rights. This paper will show how Pogge fails to distinguish between what I call status quo and revisionist libertarian positions on intellectual property. Making this distinction, I maintain, would strengthen the human rights argument and allow Pogge to avoid the counterintuitive conclusion of his response to the libertarian. (shrink)