Guidelines for the Examination of Pharmaceutical Patents: Developing a Public Health Perspective

This paper is intended to be a contribution towards the improvement of transparency and efficiency of patentability examination for pharmaceuticals inventions, particularly in developing countries. It proposes a set of general guidelines for the assessment of some of the common modalities of pharmaceutical patent claims, and suggests elements for the development of public health-sensitive guidelines for the evaluation and review of pharmaceutical patents at the national level. It examines the practices of some patent offices and suggests some mechanisms that may be adopted to incorporate public health perspectives in procedures for the granting of pharmaceutical patents.