Patents in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Patents in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Intellectual property theft through piracy and counterfeiting has risen dramatically over the last couple of decades. As a result, the level of activity of pirates and counterfeiters has increased, and so has the scale of organizations participating in the same. The pharmaceutical industry, which forms the basis of this text, has been widely affected; more than “90% of donor-funded HIV medicines” in the market today are generic (ITPC Factsheet, n.d., p. 1). Patents are a major instrument in the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
What exactly do patents protect in the pharmaceutical industry?
A patent on a drug gives the owner, in this case the inventing pharmaceutical company, the exclusive “right to prevent others from making, using, importing, or selling it” (Elliott