Two proposals to challenge long-standing patent rules will be debated this week at a meeting of governments drawing up policies aimed at bringing useful and affordable medicines to the developing world, The Financial Times writes.

A coalition of non-governmental organizations and developing countries is calling for “patent pools” to combine intellectual property rights on existing medicines, and a “prize fund” to stimulate discovery of drugs for neglected diseases. Both initiatives face strong opposition from some developed countries and the pharmaceutical industry. They would be designed to reward their developers’ efforts while allowing low-cost competitor generic companies to make the drugs as cheaply as possible immediately on launch.

The aim is to counteract market failures in the conventional approach to developing meds, which grants exclusive sales rights over several years to a drug developer and does not stimulate research into illnesses primarily affecting low-income countries. The ideas will be raised at the week-long intergovernment working group on public health, innovation and intellectual property convened by the World Health Organization, which opened in Geneva on yesterday.

In the US, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a prize fund. (You can read more about the idea in this interview with Jamie Love, who helped develop the proposal).

Alternative WHO draft proposals argue for cheaper distribution of meds through measures including more support for generic companies, compulsory licences under WTO rules, and transparent, consistent and lower prices for drugs. But Knowledge Ecology International, a US-based NGO, has championed the two more radical approaches, and received support from several developing countries including Kenya, which may launch pilot versions.

Patent pools, which have been used in aircraft manufacture and to develop common technology standards for DVDs, combine different developers’ intellectual property, which is licensed out to third parties, while paying those with the patents a fixed royalty in proportion to their contribution.

The prize fund would force governments to invest in innovation, committing them to paying out royalties over a number of years to the medicines developed while allowing generic companies to make them as cheaply as possible. Drugmakers argue that it is often inadequate investment in health systems rather than high drug prices that is the main barrier.

Source: The Financial Times