A aspiração do sistema jurídico de patentes e o caso dos produtos terapêuticos para doenças negligenciadas

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate whether the morality of a duty imposed by the current patent system is appropriate to its aspiration to promote innovation, especially in the case of research and development (R&D) of new therapeutic products for neglected diseases. Stemming from an analytical and empirical approach, this investigation is based on descriptive inferences, which are built in accordance with indirect data collection and guided by Epstein and King’s rules of inference. The theoretical framework applied to interpret the data collection was extracted from Bankowski’s distinction between the morality of a duty and the morality of aspiration in the act of interpreting a rule. Firstly, it is possible to infer the insufficiency in following the duties imposed by the current patent legal system in order to promote innovation in the case of neglected diseases. Secondly, it is inferable from the collected data that, even within the multiple groups of neglected diseases, there is a hierarchy among those maladies, which emphasize the importance of considering their particularities in the process of elaborating public polices and interpreting the current patent legal system. Finally, it is also possible to conclude that the research and development of new therapeutic products for all kinds of diseases have not mirrored real public health needs.