Government report admits trade rules may block access to treatment
A report commissioned by the Treasury says the government should look favourably on any proposals to amend TRIPS that may be necessary to address the public health crisis in developing countries.
What is intellectual property?
Intellectual Property Rights (IP rights) refer to the ownership of ideas, giving the creator of something with commercial value (for example a composer, author or inventor) a ‘property right’ over their work. Examples of intellectual property rights include patents (for inventions) copyright (for written work) and trademarks. IP Rights create legal barriers to prevent others using the intellectual property for a certain period of time. As an example, patents on medicines typically last for 20 years, while sound recordings are protected for 50 years. Patents on medicines give patent owners the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling their invention. This gives the patent owner the ability to charge high prices for their product (as they have no competitors). The World Trade Organisation’s TRIPS agreement sets out minimum international standards for intellectual property protection.
What’s IP for?
IP rights are defended as necessary to promote innovation (the creation of new ideas). For example, it may cost a lot to carry out the research necessary to invent a new medicine. Without the protection provided by patents anyone else could copy the invention, and the inventor might not have a financial incentive to invest in the initial research.
What’s the problem then?
The monopoly protection provided by patents has serious implications for millions of people worldwide, by pricing medicines out of reach of poor people and poor countries. In addition the current system has failed to stimulate innovation where it is most needed. 10% of global R&D money is spent on research into the problems that afflict 90% of the worldīs population (as there is little financial incentive to invest in diseases that only those in poor parts of the world suffer from). Millions of people are dying because the medical care they need is either too expensive or because companies don’t invest in the treatment they need, yet the pharmaceutical industry remains the world’s most profitable industry.
“While we have the technical capacity to provide access to lifesaving medicines, vaccines or other interventions, which are indeed widely available in the developed world, millions of people, including children, suffer and die in developing countries because such means are not available and accessible there.” Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health, 2006
“The World Trade Organisationīs Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, along with `TRIPS-plusī variants in regional and bilateral agreements, strikes the wrong balance between the interests of technology holders and the wider public interest.” UNDP Human Development Report 2005
People & Planet believes that public heath is more important than corporate profits, and the current system has the wrong priorities. It is possible to encourage R&D, AND ensure the products of R&D are available for everyone. not just the very rich. We need to remember that the patent system is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is supposed to be a means of enouraging innovation for the benefit of humankind. If it does not do this as effectively as possible, changes must be made.
World Trade Rules aren’t working!
People & Planet’s Treat AIDS Now campaign calls on the UK government to tackle the trade rules that keep essential medicines out of reach of millions of people.. The UK Treasury commissioned report makes a number of important comments and recommendations on international trade rules and their impact on access to essential medicines. These focus on concerns that
“TRIPS [trade rules on intellectual property] may be too restrictive to meet the needs of developing countries in relation to access to pharmaceutical products.”
Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, published on 6 December, was commissioned by the Treasury to ‘review the UK’s intellectual property framework’. It examines the balance between creating incentives for innovation (for example, for drugs companies to invest into researching new treatments) and allowing access for consumers.
As well as considering the domestic picture, the report also includes recommendations on international action, to tackle the problems faced by developing countries.
Most significantly the review
“Believes that the Government should look favourably on any future proposals to amend TRIPS that may be necessary to address the public health crisis in developing countries”.
As well as urging the government to consider reform of TRIPS, it also calls on the UK to do more in the meantime to help countries use the mechanisms that are already available to them to access cheap medicines. The government should take action to protect the rights that countries already have to make use of exceptions to TRIPS (e.g to be able to import cheap generic versions of drugs from elsewhere in a public health crisis), and to provide support for African patent offices to help them use those provisions that are currently availalbe.
Trade rules suck!
The review also questions the wisdom of TRIPS’ aim of enforcing the same strict international standards for developing countries as industrial nations. Just as rich countries like the UK and the US developed by borrowing ideas from each other, the review says that developing countries should be allowed to choose for themselves when to strengthen their patent regimes. It recommends that the government should consider whether the least developed countries should be given longer to comply with TRIPS.
“The economic evidence, and in particular, the history of currently developed countries suggest that a single one-size-fits-all approach is inappropriate”. (Gower Review)
In an interview with Becky Hogge of openDemocracy the Review’s author, Andrew Gower questioned whether TRIPS should have come into existence in the first place.
“I’ll say this about TRIPS; In the world today, it would be absolutely impossible to negotiate something like TRIPS. It’s amazing to me that the WTO and its members were able to pull that off. There are two reasons why that wouldn’t happen now. One is because world trade talks are very difficult anyway. The other is that some of its provisions do not look to me to be wise.”
The report’s recommendations on TRIPS
Recommendation 5: UKPatent Office should undertake joint working with African patent offices from mid-2007, with the aim of:
helping them to take advantage of the flexibilities currently existing in the WTO/TRIPS architecture where appropriate; and
encouraging them to make positive use of IP rights through dissemination of information in patents.
Recommendation 6: Encourage the international community under the auspices of the WTO to review the TRIPS status of the least developed countries prior to 2016 and consider whether further extension for reaching TRIPS compliance would be appropriate.
Recommendation 7: Government should encourage WTO members to ratify the amendments to TRIPS to make importation of drugs easier and cheaper.