Here is a clear case not of whim, but necessity. The drug land formerly owned by white farmers in Zimbabwe is needed.
Going further ... A Patent is intangible. It is not instrinsicly possessable. A Sovereign -- the King or the Government -- may grant multiple companies the rights to to manufacture an item, and with patents not only does the Government give (grant) the right, it gives an exclusive right to those companies -- the rest of us and our companies are excluded from manufacturing and/or selling and/or using the item that the patent covers.
Once it hold a patent, in our country, the company may grant others the right to manufacture, to sell, to use the item. It is possible, and if I understand correctly, that in Britain certain types patents are not so transferable -- only the grantee itself may produce or sell the item.
The item that the patent covers is not singular. There may be and always are many of it, many are made. When one person holds one of those items it does not preclude anyone else from having full possession of a item that is exactly the same. A person has a patented item, another person has an item covered by the same patent -- neither person's holding of that item affects the other. There is no theft, no borrowing, no lending.
The patent itself, a type of contract, is not intrinsicly exclusive. The sovereign may make grants to many grantees. If the sovereign does so there is no theft by those to whom it grants the right. This is the instant case, the case of the flu drug in Taiwan.
Going on ... The recipe, the method, the specifications for making what the patent covers is not possible to be exclusively held. That process or plan, in our country, is published and recorded publicly at the Patent Office. A manufacturer or inventor does NOT have to register an invention or novel process as a Patent. He and his company can keep it private as a Trade Secret.
Yet many inventors opt for giving away the secrets of their invention. Why? Because then, by means of the Patent the Government grants to them in return, they can have exclusive rights, protected by the forces the police and judicial powers of the Government.
Many inventions covered by such exclusive Patent would if not so covered, be re-invented independently by others or the design or recipe would be reverese engineered, copied, by others. It is the Government, at our expense raised by taxes, which gives any value whatsoever to such exclusive Patents.
In conclusion: A Patent is always and instrinsically property of the Government (the Sovereign). It is granted upon some contracted basis to a person or company. It is like a rented property, a rented apartment, a leased thousand acres used by a cattleman. It can be reclaimed by the Government at the whim or necessity of the Government. In good Governments, like we have, for the Government to do so by whim requires fair notice, some due process, and compensation. For a good Government to do so by necessity requires nothing. It is then Force Majeur, like an Act of God, a hurricane for example.
Clever, but not the same. Tamiflu is NOT a zero-sum game. Taiwan is not taking the drug from anyone, they're making more on an emergency basis. I've yet to see anyone in Zimbabwe make any new land.