D’une pandémie à l’autre, rareté artificielle et rente sous brevet de médicament

Abstract

this article questions the patent as an institutional architecture designed to strike a balance between protection and diffusion of innovation, to remove the risk of scarcity in the market. From one pandemic to the next, the stylised facts show that the patent did not solve the problem of scarcity associated with market failures in pharmaceuticals, but substituted an artificial, institutionally constructed scarcity logic. The patent has so become a problematic institution, a pillar of an innovation and production system geared towards the pursuit of monopolies and rents, and in so doing, the source of supply rationing. Finally, intellectual property is at the heart of a logic of profitability that is prevalent in a capitalist production system, which is neither anthropogenetic nor cognitive but definitely financialised.