The Pricey Impact of Patent Extension Lawsuits on Healthcare Spending

In 2021, a significant court ruling declared part of Brazil's Industrial Property Law unconstitutional. This led some pharmaceutical companies to file lawsuits aiming to extend their patents. A study was conducted to assess the potential economic fallout of these extensions on medicine costs for both the public healthcare system, known as SUS, and the private market. The research, spanning from May 2021 to July 2022, revealed that the financial impact of court-ordered extensions was more substantial than the now-defunct sole paragraph of article 40.

For the SUS, the costs generated by these extensions were notably higher, ranging from 18% to 28% across various price reduction scenarios, compared to what was previously outlined in the law. In the private sector, the expenses jumped even higher, with increases of up to 37. 5% in the basic reduction scenario. These findings suggest that the judicial extensions are more detrimental to consumers than the old law was, regardless of the price reduction hypotheses considered.

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