Center

Leveraging China's potential

By Hank A. McKinnell (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-26 08:32

IPR and innovation

I want to first stress that China has made significant inroads in strengthening its protection of patents and intellectual property rights (IPR), and I applaud the efforts China has made to date.

I believe increasingly enhanced IPR protection will greatly expedite the growth of research-based pharmaceuticals in and biotech industries in China, and it is critical that China continues down the path of strengthening protection for intellectual property rights.

In fact, I believe the most important step in moving towards a world-class life science industry is to ensure confidence in the protection of intellectual property rights.

Given the 10-to-15 years it takes to develop and register a new medicine, you can understand why weak IPR protection could have an enormous chilling effect on innovation. 

Confidence that innovation will be recognized and protected leads to an explosion of innovation. And, in the research-based pharmaceutical industry in particular, success in innovation has a real "multiplier effect" on the surrounding economy.

We are finally moving into the long awaited, "golden age of medicine."

After a relative lull in pharmaceutical breakthroughs, the laboratories of the research-based pharmaceutical industry are brimming with breakthroughs. Our industry will certainly make more progress in controlling disease over the next two decades than we made over the previous two millennia.

And while a range of groups, from universities to corporations, do biomedical research, it is private companies, like Pfizer, that account for 95 per cent of all new medicines.

First and foremost, the government's focus on strengthening intellectual property rights is the right direction for China.

In addition to strengthened IPR protection, China's pharmaceutical industry would also benefit from a rethinking of the balance between risk and rewards, innovation and pricing.