On October 25, 2019, the Texas A&M Journal of Property Lawand the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University School of Law jointly organized the “Pharmaceutical Innovation, Patent Protection, and Regulatory Exclusivities” Symposium. Although none of the organizers and participants could predict what was to come in the next few months, there was a wide consensus that the rapid changes in the pharmaceutical landscape and our continuous struggle to strike a proper balance between proprietary protection and public access in the public health arena deserves scholarly, policy, and regulatory attention.

To help contextualize the articles included in this special issue and to inform readers about the inspirations and motivations behind the Symposium, Part II of this Introductory Article explores the different modalities of protection—in particular the role of patents and regulatory exclusivities in providing the needed incentives to pharmaceutical developers. Part III identifies three sets of challenges that affect the future of pharmaceutical innovation at both the domestic and international levels. Part IV utilizes a very recent event—the COVID-19 pandemic—to illustrate the wide array of policy options and possibilities both within and outside the intellectual property system. This Part makes salient the nexus between the domestic and international debates on pharmaceutical innovation.