ABSTRACT
Intellectual property (IP) rights and patent protection of medicines are controversial topics in public health. IP rights provide legal protection to intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic areas. IP laws aim to safeguard creators and other producers of intellectual goods, such as research-based pharmaceutical industries, by granting them certain time-limited rights by which to control the use made of those products. In the pharmaceutical sector IP issues exist in delicate equilibrium. On the one hand, governments and decision makers sustain monopolies over the price and production of medicines, which motivate research and development; on the other hand, they want to guarantee affordable prices to life-saving medicines.
