The Economics of Transferable Patent Extensions

Résumé

Faced with a scarcity of treatments for neglected diseases, experts and governmental organizations have lately proposed to build strong pull incentives around transferable vouchers. Inventors would be granted, and allowed to sell these vouchers to pharmas desiring to extend their exclusive IP rights. However, we know little about how such “Transferable Exclusivity Extensions” fare relative to prizes, who is likely to acquire them and at what cost for society, or how the burden is shared among nations. We shed light on these questions, both from a theoretical perspective and from an empirical analysis of European data.

Mots-clés

Vouchers; pull mechanisms; burden sharing; administered drug prices; prizes;

Codes JEL

I18: Government Policy • Regulation • Public Health
L5: Regulation and Industrial Policy
O3: Technological Change • Research and Development • Intellectual Property Rights