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In recent years, in order to cooperate with the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the Executive Yuan of Taiwan has announced the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law’s latest amendment and declared to establish the patent linkage system in 2016. The partial amendment of Pharmaceutical Affairs Law legislated on Dec. 29th, 2017 indicates that patent linkage system was established to strengthen the relation between the listed drugs and the disclosure of the patent information, so as to let the original branded drug companies and the generic drug companies to clarify the potential infringement arguments. However, the application of the patent linkage system has brought up to many discussions and arguments. Moreover, because of the controversy related to the abuse of the Patent Listing and the appropriation of the 30-Month Stay, there have been much consideration about the impact this would have brought to the drug industry of Taiwan, which mainly consists of generic drug companies.
This study explores the historical evolution and regulations of the patent linkage system in the United States and provides understandings of the background and the intentions of the legislation at the time, in order to compare the pros and cons before and after it. This study further analyzes Taiwan’s structure and current status of the pharmaceutical industry, observes the dynamics of the overall pharmaceutical market, compares the medical insurance system and pharmaceutical industry in Taiwan to that of the United States, and how we learn from the introduction of the patent linkage system in other countries. This study tries to integrate the factors and concludes with the possible impacts on Taiwan after the implementation and deduces the applicability of the patent linkage system in Taiwan.
This study further compares the current draft of the Patent Linkage amendments in Taiwan to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law and the Patent Law with the U.S. Patent Linkage System, proposes amendments to the law and the implementation of the patent linking system in the future, and how Taiwanese manufacturers, both branded and generic drugs companies, can make responsive measures.
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