Humanitarian Use Licenses

Humanitarian use licenses are provisions in a license whereby inventors and technology suppliers protect in advance the possibility of sharing their technology with people in need. Thus, humanitarian use licenses set the conditions for the provision of access to innovations for people in need at a royalty free basis or at lower costs. Humanitarian use licenses assure that products of research and development stay publicly available and that at the same time the incentive function of exclusive intellectual property rights are maintained.

Humanitarian use licenses represent a tool to distribute the outcomes of Research & Development more equally. They relax the exclusive claims of intellectual property rights with more permissive licenses for developing countries. Intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property. Understanding the political reality of IP includes a realization that IP is originally a Western notion currently being introduced into other parts of the world. This is necessary to understand why IP law has severe difficulty in taking hold in non-western societies in general and in developing countries in particular. More understanding is required of the differences between economic sectors and the respective roles and functions of public versus private institutions in society. (Egelyng)

There are several functions related to IPR that make them work as a catalyst for the market. But there are also fundamental differences between the economic and social conditions of developed countries and developing countries. Hence, conventional licensing practices have caused distortions that make humanitarian use licenses a tool worth considering.

The holder of a legal Intellectual Property Right is generally entitled to exclude others from using his IP for a period of time. This gives the owner a comparative advantage over others for a limited time. Thus, innovative activity is rewarded, which stimulates R&D and improves the life of all.

But many developing countries are characterized by a weak Research & Development sector. Of the 400,000 inventions for which patent applications are submitted annually, developing countries take part in 1 percent whereas the USA, the USSR, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan participate in 73 percent. (Vestry Besarovic) This makes the industrial sector of developing countries largely dependent on imitation. Universally imposed minimum standards of patent protection, as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights requires, are not likely to contribute to economic growth unless a particular level of development has been achieved (Thompson and Rushing). When developing countries have to purchase expensive technology because of a protective regime to comply with TRIPS, it can lead to the breakup of industries and thus reduce economic growth.

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