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Toward A Distributive Commons In Patent Law, Peter Lee

Peter Lee

While patents provide incentives to invent and develop new inventions, they can constrain access to vital health technologies such as medicines, diagnostics, and nutritional innovations. These access constraints can severely compromise human health, particularly for low-income populations, and have elicited severe criticism. Against this seemingly intractable background, this Article explores methods for integrating distributive values in the patent system while remaining sensitive to property rights and private ordering. Rather than look inward to existing patent doctrine, this Article finds solutions in the political economy of life sciences research. In particular, this Article argues that public institutions, which contribute enormous amounts …