“The coronavirus situation highlights a unique tension in the patent system, which can at once incentivize and spur research and development activities in response to a health crisis and also draw the ire of public health advocates, who see patents as barriers to better patient health outcomes.”
Since China announced the first fatality caused by a virus about which little was known at the time, coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has grown to pandemic proportions. In the less than three months since that first death, this new strain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-related (SARS) coronavirus has shuttered social gatherings, precipitated a mandatory work-from-home revolution and decimated large parts of the world’s economy.
