The appropriateness of patents legislations for attaining sustainable development in Egypt

Abstract EN

This study aims to overview the appropriateness and adequacy of the present Egyptian patent legislations for attaining sustainable development in Egypt as a developing country.

In view of the commercial strategies recently employed by large companies from the developed countries to prolong their products, it became urgently needed to revise Egyptian provisions pertaining the protection of patents and reevaluate the conditions and criteria of patentability.

Recently, so-called “evergreening” practices are being made by the large companies, especially, pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies.

Through these evergreening practices those large companies seek patent protection for modified forms of base compound, medical uses of a known chemical compound, combinations of known chemical compounds, particular formulations (tablets, topical forms), dosage regimens, and processes, among others – what is otherwise referred to in the literature as “secondary patents”.

These practices are made by exploiting ambiguities in regulatory provisions, such as ence of specified criteria for inventive step.

These practices limit competition from generic drug national companies and this in turn, can keep medicine prices high and affects the national innovation, which consequently affects the development in Egypt.

As a result, the objective of patent laws to promote innovation is defeated and, instead, the patent laws are just used for protecting monopoly.