Falsifikovanje lekova i medicinskih sredstava – opravdanost i karakteristike krivično-pravne reakcije

Abstract

In the activities of suppression of counterfeit medical products, the interests and interventions of various branches of private and public law, intellectual property law, medical law of the public health protection and criminal law, overlap. Considering that actions of suppression of counterfeit medicines are often reduced to protection of commercial interests and court procedure of determining the right to compensation, and less to protection of public health interests and procedure of criminal intervention, the paper discusses the legitimacy of criminal law measures in suppression of counterfeiting of medical products. The aim of the paper is to point to the role and mechanisms of criminal law in the global system of suppression of medical products counterfeiting, bearing in mind that last year the Republic of Serbia signed the CoE Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health (MediCrime Convention). After analyzing the scope and consequences of counterfeiting of medical products and problems in suppression of this phenomenon, it is concluded that the legitimacy of criminal law intervention justifies the evident "pandemic" expansion of the market of counterfeit medicines and the almost complete lack of incrimination of counterfeiting of medicines in national legislation. The paper presents the system of criminal law measures established by the Convention and analyzes the relationship of substandard, unregistered and generic medicines in relation to the category of counterfeit medicines defined by the Convention.