Pharma Cartel Fearing Challenges To Its Lucrative Drug & Vaccine Patents In Europe

In a revealing development, Politico reports that pharmaceutical companies are choosing not to participate in a unified patent system recently introduced in European Union (EU) countries. The new system is promoted as being beneficial for inventors, offering a single patent that protects inventions in 17 EU countries and establishing a so-called ‘Unified Patent Court’ for patent challenges. If they wish, however, companies can instead choose to continue using the old system. Reports suggest that, in order to ensure it remains as difficult as possible to challenge their lucrative drug and vaccine patents, many pharmaceutical manufacturers are opting out of the new system.

Under the old system, patents are granted by national courts or the European Patent Office. A European patent covers up to 39 countries, including all 27 EU countries, but is enforced at national level. The complexity of the old system is thus advantageous for the pharmaceutical industry as it requires competitors to challenge patents in multiple jurisdictions.

If a generic drug company successfully challenges a unified patent under the new system, it would automatically gain access to the markets of the 17 participating countries. But by sticking to the old system, pharmaceutical companies can strategically defend their patents – particularly at the expense of generic companies, which face the significant burden of contesting in each country separately.

Patents on drugs and vaccines are used to control entire countries

One of its top five industry sectors with the most patent applications in 2022, Europe currently accounts for almost a quarter of global pharmaceutical sales. It therefore isn’t by accident that the continent’s new patent system has a transition period of at least seven years, and potentially as many as fourteen. From an economic standpoint, European drug and vaccine companies could have lost billions had they not had the right to opt out.

But allowing these opt outs also benefits the EU itself. As we describe in our 2010 book, ‘The Nazi Roots of the Brussels EU,’ the enforcing of drug and vaccine patents is one of the key strategies via which the EU is attempting to expand its dictatorial influence. To understand this, we first need to realize that patents are not only legal documents, issued by government agencies to define the right of ownership of a product or technical process, they are also economic tools that can be used to control markets.

In addition, however, patents also function as political instruments. In the health sector, for example, patents on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines can be used as strategic tools to effectively control entire countries. We saw this most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, when pharmaceutical companies coerced countries into signing secret contracts for the purchase of expensive experimental vaccines. Not only did these deals include liability waivers protecting manufacturers against lawsuits in the event of serious side effects occurring, in some cases they also required state assets such as federal bank reserves, embassy buildings, and even military bases, to be put up as collateral. Such demands essentially amount to what can only be described as ‘state capture.’

It can therefore be seen that large multinational companies do not need to formally unite in order to control global markets, they simply need to stake out their territorial patent claims. Patents potentially allow companies to control markets covering entire continents, but without being subject to restrictions such as national boundaries. The EU model and its mutually dependent relationship with the pharmaceutical industry is a classic example of this.

Why patents on specific combinations of micronutrients are fundamentally different

Patents issued for specific combinations of micronutrients in connection with the natural prevention of diseases, such as those recently awarded to Dr. Rath and his research team by the US Patent and Trademark Office, are fundamentally different to those granted to the pharmaceutical industry for drugs and vaccines. One key reason for this is that naturally occurring molecules such as vitamins cannot be patented individually, only in combinations.

But there is also another, more fundamental, reason. The pharmaceutical industry is an investment business, the long-term viability of which depends upon the continued existence of diseases. To drug and vaccine manufacturers, patents and their associated royalties are the basis for the entire business model. Rather than eliminating diseases, pharmaceutical patents instead aim to cement them as permanent marketplaces.

In contrast, micronutrient research and Cellular Medicine aim squarely at the prevention – and ultimately, the elimination – of diseases. Built on the principle that chronic deficiencies of micronutrients are the primary cause of diseases, this is the approach followed by Dr. Rath and his team of scientists at the Dr. Rath Research Institute. By directly addressing deficiencies, patents on specific combinations of micronutrients thus have the entirely opposite goal to those granted for pharmaceutical products.

It can therefore be seen that, rather than Europe’s new unified patent system, it is science-based combinations of micronutrients that, by directly addressing the primary causes of ill health, now constitute the biggest threat to the pharmaceutical ‘business with disease.’