Dipti Pandey, Reva University School of Legal Studies
Medical methods, such as medicinal, surgical, and diagnostic treatments, may fail to meet the industrial applicability standards under many patent laws, rendering them non-patentable. This is because of their small industrial impact and emphasis on impacting the human or animal body. Furthermore, medical professional conventions, such as the Hippocratic Oath and medical codes of ethics, prioritize sharing medical information for the benefit of patients over personal gain, which opposes medical process patenting.
Over 80 nations, including some TPP negotiators such as Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, expressly ban the patentability of medical treatments. In Canada, medical techniques are not specifically barred from being patented, however, case law prohibits patents on surgical and therapeutic methods while allowing patents on diagnostic methods. Although the patentability of medical techniques is not expressly barred in New Zealand, case law has regularly denied such patents. Despite the fact that the AUSFTA protected the freedom to do so, the Patents Act of 1990 in Australia does not expressly exclude medical operations from patentability, and case law reveals that they are, in fact, patentable.
Economic considerations have always played little influence in the practice of medicine. However, the expansion of managed healthcare systems in recent years, particularly in the United States, has resulted in decreased physician compensation and reduced autonomy in medical decision-making. This shifting landscape has altered the ethical considerations surrounding medical treatment process patenting.
With the development of managed healthcare, the ethical grounds for patenting medical treatment processes have shifted. Because of the economic demands and financial limits imposed by these systems, some stakeholders have advocated for the idea of patenting medical processes to provide financial incentives and rewards for medical advances.
