2004-10-06 Patents

I wrote two days ago that WIPO needs reform ¹, and today Heise writes about a change in WIPO direction. ² Yay! Brazil and Argentina seem to have done the right thing.

Heise

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly agreed on Monday, October 4, 2004, to further examine a proposal by a group of developing countries to integrate in a more systematic manner the development dimension in all of WIPO’s work. Member states are expected to formally adopt this decision in a plenary meeting of the General Assembly on Tuesday, October 5, 2004. ³

I hope this gather some momentum on the patents issue – not only SoftwarePatents, but also in the pharmaceutical sector where far more developing nations should take advantage of the national emergency clause in TRIPS:

SoftwarePatents

*4.**: We agree that the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health. [...] we reaffirm the right of WTO Members to use, to the full, the provisions in the TRIPS Agreement, which provide flexibility for this purpose.

*5.**: Accordingly [...] we recognise that these flexibilities include:

*(b)**: Each Member has the right to grant compulsory licences and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licences are granted.

*(c)**: Each Member has the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency, it being understood that public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics, can represent a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency.

The above is taken from the _Full text of Trade-Related Intellectual Property issues (TRIPS) declaration (11*15/2001)* in Doha. ⁴_

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There’s also an interesting *Overview of the Benefits of the Doha Agreement on TRIPS and Public Health* by James Love. ⁵ This last paper comes from an interesting website: CPT is the *Consumer Project on Technology*, and just looking at the list of topics on their homepage ⁶ makes me want to read more.

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See also *TRIPS and public health* by Vishwas H Devaiah. His conclusion:

The TRIPS agreement apparently provides for flexibility to member countries to implement policies and programmes to promote public health. However, the contradictions in the agreement make it difficult for developing countries and LDCs to use it to promote any long-term public health policy. The provisions are either too ambiguous or too vulnerable to restrictive interpretations that serve the interests of developed countries and the pharmaceutical industry. Although some of the recent changes in the provisions – such as those outlined in the Doha Declaration – have the potential to provide increased access to medicines under certain, specified circumstances, TRIPS in its present form cannot, in the longer run, be used to promote public health. ⁷

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For more on patents and development, specially considering the role Swiss pharma giants are playing, take a look Richard Gerster’s interesting short paper *Patents and Development: Lessons learnt from the economic history of Switzerland*. ⁸

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#Patents