The effect of pharmaceutical patent term length on r&d and drug expenditures in Canada.

The authors make a useful and original contribution to evaluating the impact of strengthened patent protection of pharmaceuticals on Canadian healthcare expenditures. This commentary argues that their second task - measuring the impact of strengthened patent protection on R&D spending in Canada - faces an insurmountable conceptual problem: Corporate decisions on the location of R&D activities bear no theoretical relationship to the location of sources of R&D funding and are guided by other factors, including political considerations.