The problem is, Nutriset has been doing this with a special nut based paste it created as a Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) which has been used in several hunger-prone countries. It has been quite a success since it started off, and rightly so. It made it much easier to treat malnutritioned children even in the most lacking of facilities. Previously, the method of special milk-based diets, though effective, wasn’t far reaching enough due to it requiring of the malnutritioned children being brought to a clean hospital, or powdered food requiring water which was often dirty and caused infections.
Taking off slightly from the current case, the question in my head is, how does one view the effect of patenting such a product? On one hand, the company rightly should receive benefits for its production and promotion of this product, which indeed is a lot more effective that previous methods and nothing like it had been done before. On the other hand, excluding more manufacturers from making it it doesn’t just mean less profits for someone, it’s also possibly and probably the difference between life and death for some people. So in the worst case scenario, it is either the difference between deaths in the future due to lack of further development in the process, or deaths now due to limited access of the current product? This issue has been haunting the pharmaceutical industry already; is it now moving to an even more basic segment- food? Or can this be treated as an essential medicine as well? [WHO states that an essential medicine is as follows: “Essential medicines are those that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population.”] Is there any sort of middle ground here? This question may also be relevant if the need for “climate-proof food plants” arises in the future – food plants which will survive through any sort of climate change!
Coming back to the current case, the two US based non-profits, as well as some academics are stating that the patent claims are very broad and would cover a whole range of food items. If true, this certainly unbalances some of the ambiguity provided in the above para, since it allows us to throw the sides into more convenient boxes of good and bad. The ‘bad’ being the side trying to claim more than they deserve. “Their patent is so broad and generic,” says the executive-director of one of the nonprofits, “There are numerous products on the market today that would violate this patent.” Meanwhile, the French company has claimed that it has not received the complaint yet, and said it wouldn’t make any comment till it does.
Patents are there to reward inventors who made significant contributions (i.e. new and inventive) to the existing art. These contributions are published for anyone to try further improving them, and are then made available to anyone at patent expiry. If there is no access to a patented product, or if the patented product is not accessible in sufficient quantities on the market, so that health problems may incur in a given country, then compulsory licensing is the available legal tool. To my knowledge, India does have such tool in its patent legislation. Remains to effectively make use of it.
Any other claim over patented products looks not very far from attempts to steal the rewards of the inventors efforts. Anyone engaging in such activities must seriously consider the dramatic disincitive effect that it would create on the those willing to advance technological progress, without whom humanity would not benefit these (patented) inventions. This is the social pact of patents.