The national government advanced this Wednesday with a significant modification to the intellectual property regime applied to medicines and left behind the restrictive scheme that had been in place since 2012 for analyzing chemical-pharmaceutical patents. The new resolution states that from now on, if patents are granted for pharmaceutical products already being marketed in the country by third parties, the holders of those patents will not be able to prevent the continuation of that marketing or claim compensation. This point was included to avoid an immediate shake-up of products already on the local market and to mitigate one of the most sensitive fears that any patent reform for medicines arouses. From the ruling party, the main political spokesperson for the measure was the Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation, Federico Sturzenegger, who celebrated the repeal and assured that Argentina “is returning to the world.” The new system aligns Argentina with the intellectual property standards respected by its trading partners, including the United States, and emphasized that products already on the market will not be affected. The political and economic background also does not go unnoticed. That old framework had been criticized for years by international laboratories and the United States, which considered it a barrier to intellectual property protection. For the government, the measure will attract innovation, predictability, and a friendlier framework for new therapies. The norm expressly repealed the guidelines dictated during the Kirchner era and stipulated that from now on, the INPI will evaluate each patent application on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with the general criteria provided for in Law 24.481. In practice, the Executive branch decided to dismantle a regulatory corset that for more than a decade had set specific limits on patenting inventions linked to the pharmaceutical sector. For sectors linked to the local production of generics and access to medicines, the debate revolves around how much it could increase the cost of treatments or reinforce the dominant positions of large laboratories. The bilateral agreement with the United States, disseminated by the USTR office, included a specific chapter on intellectual property and opened the door to concrete reforms in the Argentine patent system. Now, with this repeal, the administration of Javier Milei seeks to show a clear signal of alignment with international standards and, at the same time, fulfill one of the commitments assumed in the commercial understanding signed with Washington in early February. The official text maintains that strengthening intellectual property rights is important to promote innovation, increase the availability of new chemical-pharmaceutical products, and accelerate the arrival of new drugs to the markets, even in developing countries. The decision was formalized through Joint Resolution 1/2026, signed by the Minister of Health, Mario Lugones, the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, and the president of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), Carlos María Gallo. It also argues that adequate protection generates predictability and legal certainty, and that maintaining the previous guidelines implied a loss of social benefits associated with innovation. In line with this, the resolution states that it was convenient not to restrict the natural competition of the INPI to examine the patent applications it receives. The change also has a transitional clause with a strong impact. According to its explanation, the 2012 resolution had made it “very difficult, if not impossible,” to obtain a patent for a medicine in the country. For now, the Casa Rosada chose to send an unequivocal signal: in a particularly sensitive area such as health, it is also willing to remove old barriers to fulfill its agenda of openness and strategic rapprochement with the United States. The official decision of this Wednesday thus appears as one of the first concrete materializations of that roadmap. However, the underlying discussion is just beginning.
