Differential Pricing of Pharmaceuticals inside Europe

The volume discusses policies of price differentiation for life saving drugs inside Europe. It documents two different things - a legal expert opinion and the contributions to a conference held in Bremen in October 2008. Point of departure is the question if compulsory licenses can legally be utilized for improving access to essential medicines in countries with a small GDP particularly affected by specific diseases, exemplified at Bulgaria, Romania, and Estonia. Central to the legal opinion are the market effects of a member state´s compulsory license for the internal market. Central finding of the expertise is that the effects will depend on the type of the compulsory license. In line with the Pharmon-doctrine of the European Court of Justice, the exhaustion of patent rights is in principle limited to the territory of the issuing state. However, the expertise identifies several constellations under which the marketing will result into Community wide exhaustion. The contributions to the conference discuss these findings and position the very question into the broader European debate on pricing policies for pharmaceuticals and the international debate about access to essential medicines.