Patents: A Tool of Innovation or a Barrier to Life?

---

Patents are often seen as guardians of innovation, protecting creators and incentivising discovery. But what happens when the very tool designed to reward ingenuity becomes a gatekeeper to survival? I asked myself this question recently as I stumbled across a brilliant yet hard-hitting documentary.

Fire in the Blood (2013), a harrowing documentary, reveals how life-saving medicines were priced far beyond reach in the Global South, not due to scarcity, but because of the patent system. Medicines that could have saved millions were held behind legal walls. The justification? Innovation costs. Yet, much of the research had already been publicly funded. What was being protected, innovation or profit? India disrupted this dynamic through affordable generics, asking the uncomfortable question i.e., what is the value of a law that prioritises ownership over access to life?

South Africa, too, saw a reckoning. The Hazel Tau case (2002) challenged pharmaceutical giants in the Competition Commission, on the affordability of antiretrovirals. It wasn’t just a legal battle, it was a fight for dignity. The outcome showed the potential of Competition Law to curb monopolistic abuse and restore balance.

Solutions like compulsory licensing, patent pools, and parallel importation offer pathways to reform, but each comes with trade-offs. At the heart of it lies a tension between access and incentive, between life and law.

Now, we face new questions, with AI inventions like DABUS, who owns creation when it’s no longer human? If the purpose of law is to serve people, then we must keep asking: does our current system do that? As the Constitution of South Africa reminds us, law should promote human dignity, equality, and freedom. If a patent blocks access to a medicine that could save lives, then perhaps it is the law, not the person, that needs reform.

Because in the end, the true test of law is not how well it protects innovation, but how well it protects life.

---