Intellectual property

Helping patients and facilitating access to the proper medicines begins with bringing new and innovative treatments to market - and the best way to encourage innovation is to respect intellectual property.

In order for the pharmaceutical industry to play a meaningful role in expanding access to medicines, intellectual property must be appropriately protected.

Intellectual property rights are an essential safety net to protect the substantial investment of time and money required to bring a drug to market and to mitigate, at least to some degree, the high risk of failure inherent in pharmaceutical research and development.

On average, only one out of 10 000 originally synthesized compounds will clear all the hurdles on the way to becoming a commercially available drug. The research and development process for bringing a new drug to market can take eight to ten years to complete and cost up to USD 1-1.7 billion.