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Show The UNITAID pool would benefit tremendously if other drug companies licensed their products as well, but problems have arisen in negotiations with other prominent drug corporations. The Problems with Patent Pools In a disheartening turn of events, Johnson & Johnson, which had previously expressed interest in participation in the Medicines Patent Pool, has thus far refused to license the patents to its three essential and innovative HIV medications, rilpivirine, darunavir, and etravirine, to the pool (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2011). Johnson & Johnson does engage in reduced "access" pricing, in an effort to make expensive second-line drugs more affordable for patients in resource-limited countries. However, the drugs are priced between US$ 913 and US$ 1,095 per patient per year in the least-developed countries, which is still prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of patients in these countries (Medecins Sans Frontieres, 2011). Additionally, in spite of the seemingly ideal solution of drug patent pools, there are notable shortcomings. S o m e drug companies are reluctant to join patent pools because some pools would make distribution of generic drugs available to rapidly developing countries such as Brazil, India, and China, in which drug companies see the potential for growing markets and large profits (Butler, 2009). Although this is indeed true, there are also significant numbers of poverty-stricken people in these countries w h o require lifesaving medications, and cannot access them at current prices. The World Bank states, "...more people live on less than US$ 2 per day in India than in all of sub-Saharan Africa" (Butler, 2009). Thus, many people would be denied the ability to access such crucial medications. In addition, some countries which have been classified as "middle-income" countries have staggeringly high rates of HIV/AIDS; the most prominent example is South Africa, which, although it is considered to be more developed than most of the other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, struggles with one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world (Star-Ledger Editorial Board, 2011). Another challenge that arises is that, if generic drug companies are only allowed to produce drugs for markets in predetermined low-income countries, it is unlikely that they would be able to produce the volume of medication necessary to achieve economies of scale, preventing them from selling the drugs at cheap enough prices to be accessible to the most gravely poverty-stricken populations (Butler, 2009). In addition, drug companies do receive royalties from their participation in the patent pools; a percentage of profits reaped by the generic manufacturer are directed to the drug company that created the drug. However, the percentage is minimal; "Gilead will receive a 3 percent royalty on generic sales of tenofovir [an essential HIV/AIDS drug]... and 5 percent on other products" (Hirschler, 2011). The positive aspect of this is that resource-limited countries could potentially save over US$ 1 billion dollars each year in drug costs, assuming other drug companies join in the patent pool (Hirschler, 2011). However, these savings come at the cost of the original drug producer, which is a potential deterrent to companies joining the pool. Keeping in mind, as aforementioned, that more than 90 percent of drug company profits come from the United States and Europe alone, drug companies may not realistically be losing a large margin of profits. This should thus be considered a minor issue when weighing the advantages and disadvantages of joining a patent pool. Conclusion Patent pools are a novel contribution to solving the dire issue of HIV/AIDS treatment accessibility, particularly considering the virulence of the virus and the necessity for innovation in attempting to manage the epidemic. In order for patent pools to be widely efficacious, it is necessary for many major drug companies to take part and license the patents to their life-saving medications. However, it must also be noted that the issue of stringent patent 53 |