Considerações sobre a possibilidade jurídica de licenciamento compulsório das patentes de vacinas contra coronavírus (COVID-19), à luz do art. 71 da lei no 9.279/96

Abstract

This work analyzes a legal possibility of an eventual compulsory licensing of patents for the invention of vaccines against Covid-19. This vírus has caused a pandemic on a global scale and the world demand for climate vaccines brought to debate the use of the above mentioned legal instrument. The main source of this monograph is the law no. 9279/96, more precisely its article 71, which authorizes the government to grant licensing in cases of national or international emergency or public interest, declared by an act of the Executive Power. International treaties will also be used (such as the TRIPS Agreement and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property 1883), as well as provisions about property rights and access to health in the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988. In Brazil, the first and only case of licensing was in 2007, when the Brazilian Government, after several negotiation attempts, licensed the patent for the antiretroviral Efavirenz. The aforementioned legal mechanism is an unfolding of the social function of property, which advocates the consideration of the collective interest in the exercise of rights relating to property. This way, it will be investigated, based on the consequences of the Coronavirus, if compulsory licensing is a possible measure to be taken by the Brazilian Government, based on the above mentioned article 71 of the IPL.