Researchers Omowamiwa Kolawole and Caroline B. Ncube have published a research article entitled Rethinking Ownership, Power and Policy in Drug Patents: The Case for an Ubuntu-Infused Approach. This paper proposes a novel approach to patent law, grounded in Ubuntu, as it relates to drug patents and access to medicines. Ubuntu is a moral philosophy which emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals with societies and nature and is argued to be a necessity in addition to the right to health when analyzing patent law.
“Ubuntu as a moral philosophy is encapsulated in the expression “A person is a person through other persons.” The authors argue that a communitarian lens is essential (alongside the right to health) in approaching access to medicines. The paper challenges the current narrative as it relates to exclusive ownership of pharmaceutical innovations and an individualistic mindset.
Vaccine development relies on public funding, knowledge-sharing, and collective efforts, as seen during COVID-19 in the US through Operation Warp Speed. “As in the case of OWS, where significant state funds were ploughed into funding and developing the COVID-19 vaccine, a communitarian approach must involve rethinking the source of intellectual and material input. However, as OWS also showed, even with public funding, private ownership can still be prioritized.” An Ubuntu approach argues that “applying the communitarian ethic disrupts the notion that those who can compensate the “owner” must be prioritized in obtaining access.”
The authors conclude that arguing that communitarian interventions “would be even better served if they were recognized as viable frameworks to the current individualistic hegemony and can be important in the normalization of alternative “meaning-making”, ultimately mainstreaming it as a viable alternative for how innovation is created, rewarded and distributed.” This would lead to less patents being created in terms of medicine and instead prioritizing a right to health approach.
