Pfizer's Case Study: Business, Government And Society

Business, Government and Society

Section: IBF1
Group-D
Garbis Chirinian
Caroline Haine
Navya Kakulamarri
Olli Kaukonen
David Soulama
Javier de Quinto

SUMMARY:
In the 1970s, CEO of Pfizer, Edmund Pratt, observed that his company was losing a major market share in developing countries “because our intellectual property rights were not being respected in these countries” . Pfizer is a multinational pharmaceutical company that has operations in developing countries before many other US pharmaceutical companies.
Some developing countried did not have any economic incentive to have patent laws. Some other countries had laws whoch werent properly in place. If there wasn 't a reasonable price for the drugs, Pfizer had to tie up with a local company to produce drugs. In India and Argentina the processes/methods of producing pharmaceutical drugs could be patented but not the final products. This gave chance for competitors to make the same drugs using different methods and sell them at a much lower price.
Although little profits came from developing countries, the fact that Pfizer’s drugs could be replicated at such low prices ”raised embarrassing questions about the connections between patents and drug prices.” Also Pfizer viewed these countries as potential growth markets.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s Pfizer & IBM “globally ambitious, intellectual property-intensive” company where Pratt had spent his early career— tried to unsuccessfully sway government