Shadlen, Kenneth C. --- "The Politics of Patents and Drugs in Brazil and Mexico: The Industrial Bases of Health Policies" [2011] ELECD 959; in Shadlen, C. Kenneth; Guennif, Samira; Guzmán , Alenka; Lalitha, N. (eds), "Intellectual Property, Pharmaceuticals and Public Health" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Intellectual Property, Pharmaceuticals and Public Health

Editor(s): Shadlen, C. Kenneth; Guennif, Samira; Guzmán , Alenka; Lalitha, N.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800143

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: The Politics of Patents and Drugs in Brazil and Mexico: The Industrial Bases of Health Policies

Author(s): Shadlen, Kenneth C.

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

7. The politics of patents and drugs in
Brazil and Mexico: the industrial
bases of health policies
Kenneth C. Shadlen1

Intellectual property (IP) policies influence trajectories of industrial devel-
opment and capacities to address humanitarian concerns. As pillars of
national systems of innovation, IP regimes drive technological change
through their effect on knowledge-creation and knowledge-diffusion.
By affecting access to technologically intensive goods, such as pharma-
ceuticals, IP regimes influence national public health programs. This
chapter bridges these dimensions. Analysis of the politics of drug patents
in Brazil and Mexico shows that how IP affects the industrial sector ­ par-
ticularly the pharmaceutical industry ­ establishes the political economic
parameters affecting countries' abilities to use IP to promote public health.
Prior to the 1990s, neither Brazil nor Mexico (nor many other develop-
ing countries) granted patents on pharmaceuticals.2 Local firms could
produce "generic" versions of new drugs ­ drugs that typically were
patented in developed countries that offered pharmaceutical patents.3


1 The British Academy and Nuffield Foundation financed research for this

chapter, which was first published as an article in Comparative Politics (Vol. 42(1)
(October 2009), 41­58). It is reprinted with the permission of the journal. Rodrigo
Martinez assisted in Mexico; Eduardo Fernandez provided invaluable support in
Brazil. I thank Sarah Brooks, Matthew Flynn, Kevin Gallagher, Cori Hayden,
Lawrence King, Ariane McCabe, Tim Power, Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, Andrew
Schrank, and Pamela Starr for suggestions, and the journal's referees for their
constructive reviews.
2 Until the 1970s and ...