Pharmaceuticals is one of the sectors where patent law is thought to work best, but for one major class of drugs – anti-infectives – the weaknesses of the patent system are becoming increasingly clear. Anti-infectives decline in effectiveness over time through resistance, driven by evolution. Resistance challenges one foundation of patent theory, namely nonrivalry of knowledge. Horizontal transfer of genetic material also undermines the economic value of patent boundaries in antibiotic molecules, akin to a pollution externality. The result is a growing awareness that the current business model for antibiotics is broken and a search for new approaches. This fall, the EU IMI will begin a major project to understand the problem and potential solutions. This seminar discussed why normal IP rules shouldn't apply to antibiotics and present recent European and US initiatives in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.


I co-organized the seminar and gave a speech on recent legal and scientific initiative against anti-microbial resistance