الاستنفاد الدولي و الاستيراد الموازي للحق الاستئثاري لمالك براءة الأدوية

Abstract EN

The patent entitles its owner with an exclusive right to exploit the invention alone in all ways in the face of all, where it can prevent third parties from exploiting the invention by making it, offering it for sale, selling it or even investing it by importing its justified and legally protected product.

However, applying this rule to its launch means granting the patent owner unlimited rights and powers of scope and impact, allowing the owner of the patent to prevent third parties from carrying out any commercial operation, such as the sale or resale of the pharmaceutical product or importing it from abroad to the country where the pharmaceutical patent was registered, even if the product was put up for sale abroad by or with the consent of the patent owner himself.

Such behaviour would impede the circulation of medicines that were patented across states and would enable pharmaceutical patent holders to divide markets and price discrimination among states by offering similar products at prices ranging from one country to another.

In response to this situation, many States have established laws allowing the patent holder, or third party, to exploit the legally protected products, without the permission of the owner, and in the same context to reduce the rights of the patentholder to prevent third parties from importing patented products by establishing the principle of international exhaustion, which is a restriction on the exclusive right of the patent owner to prevent third parties from importing protected products.