The pharmaceutical industry always has unusual prominence in the debates about intellectual property rights. The pharma sector has served as the front line for the national and international controversies about the relationship between IP, R&D incentives, pricing and access to medicines for underprivileged section of the society.
IPRs (particularly patent rights), are generally understood to have two principal areas of impact in pharmaceuticals. On one hand, there is the issue of pricing and access and on the other hand, there is the issue of R&D incentives. Obviously, these two issues are closely linked, and their interplay presents a series of very difficult economic and policy issues.
Pharmaceutical industry is a research based industry and requires qualified research scientists in huge numbers every year. The growing pharma R&D operations make it very essential that IP concepts and laws must be learned by the pharmacy graduate/post graduate students, pharma professionals and those in research.
The current academic syllabus of most of the pharmacy courses do not provide adequate knowledge about the research activities in the pharma industry, the business models of innovator & generic companies and the interplay of IPRs in the entire pharma R&D ecosystem. This course is aimed to fulfill these gaps and is uniquely designed for the pharmacy students, professionals and scientists working in the pharma industry so that they can learn the essentials and can better advance in their careers.
