Introduction
When you’ve invented something new, made breakthroughs in science, revolutionized manufacturing – having the exclusive rights to produce or sell it sounds, well, right. Right? But what about when these inventions can save lives, or be used in ways their ideators did not even imagine to cause destruction and death? Legal protection by patents is limited to 20 years. Is that too much? Or is it too little? The ethical questions regarding patents are endless. This blog aims to summarize the biggest ones.
Patents In Pharma
The most fervently raised points in opposition to patents are related to medicine. If one company has the exclusive right to manufacture a medicine, its prices naturally shoot up. This prevents mass access to potentially lifesaving scientific advancements.
The World Health Organization has a list of essential medicines. These are “intended to be available in functioning health systems at all times, in appropriate dosage forms, of assured quality, and at prices individuals and health systems can afford”. Only around 10% of all medicines on this list are patented. Even amongst those, some patented drugs are provided at subsidized rates through government schemes.
However, the issue arises when a single medicine is modified too little to be treated as a new medicine, and just enough to continue patent protection. This is known as evergreening – indefinitely extending the lifespan of expiring patents. This blocks the production of generic medicines, leading the consumers to keep paying high prices.
Essential medicines also don’t account for the fact that while the basic medicine might not be patented, any advancements can be, proving a hurdle to providing the most effective healthcare access.
How to balance the right to healthcare with the fact that patents incentivize people to keep innovating and consequently improve the quality of healthcare? This is the question legislation regarding pharma patents has been trying to answer.
Genetic Engineering
Gene editing can lead to mindblowing advancements in healthcare. It can treat the root causes of diseases like cancer, autoimmune conditions and even inherited disorders by going on the molecular level. But the threat of dual-use technology looms. Even if an advancement is made with completely noble intentions in mind, filing a patent means disclosing the technical details of the invention. This means that the horrifying potential uses of gene editing, from biological warfare by creating a deadly pathogen using the technology, to believers of eugenics trying to eliminate the “inferior” genes of certain groups, has real risk of coming true after the patent has expired.
On a more abstract level, how would you feel if someone owned your DNA, the right to manipulate the very strings of what makes you you? Yes, it’s a bit dramatic, and far from a thorough understanding of gene editing. But at the heart of the question lies the fear that patenting genes means we are okay commodifying human souls.
Granting patents on gene editing is a tightrope walk. Setting the bar too high means limiting access. Setting the bar too low means unimaginably evil uses. Legislation must walk a careful balancing act.
Innovating, or Hampering Innovation?
Patents were created because they provide incentive to innovate. It’s a win-win situation: inventors get a monopoly on it for a period of time in which they can make significant financial gains. In exchange, they have to release the workings of their invention publicly. The knowledge is not monopolized. Other brilliant minds can build upon it.
The reality is a bit different. Not all patents are genuinely original, and a sizable chunk are the opposite. The working rate of patents (measuring how many were actually commercialized) filed in India in the year 2024-25 was only 1.6%. Somewhere along the line, the goalpost shifted from creating a product novel enough to obtain a patent, to throwing endless variations of similar products at the wall to see what sticks.. This hampers the quality of innovation in pursuit of quantity,
The “tragedy of the anticommons” is an added consequence. When multiple owners hold rights to different parts of the same or similar invention, they need to either collaborate or prove it doesn’t violate a separate right-holder’s patent while setting out to progress on their own work. It’s even more challenging for new entrants to navigate this landscape.
The gap here doesn’t lie in the letter of the law. A patent needs to be novel, non-obvious and have utility to be granted. The weakness lies in inconsistent enforcement, a lack of skilled examiners, and the high cost of litigating existing patents. Practice needs to catch up to legislation for patents to truly signal innovation.
Conclusion
The point is not that patents are a secret corporate conspiracy to keep science concentrated in the hands of a few as the masses suffer and watch. Obvious as it seems, rather than looking at the numbers filed, their quality should be examined. “Quality” refers not only to whether they’re really innovative, but also what innovation comes at the cost of.
References
PubMed Central, ‘Are Pharmaceutical Patents Protected by Human Rights?’ (2016) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4704437/
World Health Organisation, ‘WHO 24th Model List of Medicines’ (2025) https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09474
Geneva Network, ‘Essential Medicines and Patents’ (2020)
https://geneva-network.com/research/essential-medicines-and-patents-recent-trends-in-the-latest-editions-of-the-world-health-organization-essential-medicines-list/
Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics, ‘Ethics and Gene Patenting’ (2003) https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/bioethics/resources/ethics-and-gene-patenting/
PubMed Central, ‘The CRISPR/Cas9 System for Gene Editing’ (2016)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27500183/
PubMed Central, ‘Drug Patents: The Evergreening Problem’ (2013)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3680578/
Sunil Mani, ‘India’s IP Surge’ (2026)
https://www.theindiaforum.in/education/indias-ip-surge-patent-filing-boom-obscuring-persistent-innovation-deficit