Give the Poor Patients a Chance: Enhancing Access to Essential Medicines through Compulsory Licensing

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakkrit Kuanpoth
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
General View ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
Thai Government ◽  
Access To Essential Medicines

The important relationship between pharmaceutical patents and problem of inaccessibility of medicines by poor nations is exemplified more clearly by the experiences of developing countries in Asia. Thailand is one of these developing countries which has the most experience of the negative impact of stronger patent protection. The paper provides a general view of the problem of the inaccessibility of lifesaving medicines in Thailand. It also discusses the attempts of the Thai Government to use an available legal measure (ie compulsory licensing) to control the abuse of pharmaceutical patent rights, and provides a theoretical and practical analysis of various legal issues relating to the use of the non-voluntary licensing scheme to improve access to essential medicines.

Compulsory Licensing in Canada and Thailand: Comparing Regimes to Ensure Legitimate Use of the WTO Rules

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina M. Lybecker ◽  
Elisabeth Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Trips Agreement ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
The World ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
Doha Declaration

The tension between economic policy and health policy is a longstanding dilemma, but one that was brought to the fore with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement in 1994. The pharmaceutical industry has long argued that intellectual property protection (IPP) is vital for innovation. At the same time, there are those who counter that strong IPP negatively impacts the affordability and availability of essential medicines in developing countries. However, actors on both sides of the debate were in agreement that something needed to be done to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, especially in developing countries. In response to sustained and significant pressure from civil society groups, members of the World Trade Organization agreed to the Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (the Doha Declaration) in 2001. The Declaration clarified that countries unable to manufacture the needed pharmaceuticals could obtain more affordable generics elsewhere if necessary.

scholarly journals The People's Vaccine: Intellectual Property, Access to Essential Medicines, and the Coronavirus COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Rimmer
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
The United States ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Access To Essential Medicines

This paper explores intellectual property and access to essential medicines in the context of the coronavirus COVID-19 public health crisis. It considers policy solutions to counteract vaccine nationalism and profiteering by pharmaceutical companies and vaccine developers. This paper considers the campaign for the development of a People's Vaccine led by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, UNAIDS, Oxfam and Public Citizen. The WHO has established the ACT Accelerator in order to boost research, development, and deployment of COVID-19 technologies. However, the operation of COVAX thus far has been falling short of its original ambitions. The Medicines Patent Pool has expanded its jurisdiction to include the sharing of intellectual property related to COVID-19. Meanwhile, Costa Rica has proposed a COVID-19 Technology Access Pool – an idea for a new institutional structure which has been taken up by the WHO. In the context of the coronavirus public health crisis, there has also been discussion of the use of compulsory licensing and crown use to counteract profiteering and anti-competitive behavior. There has been a push by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and others for the public licensing of COVID-19 technologies developed with government funding. The Open COVID Pledge has been taken by a number of intellectual property owners. In response to the assertion of proprietary rights in respect of COVID-19 technologies, the open movement has championed the development of Open Science models of science. India and South Africa have put forward a waiver proposal in the TRIPS Council to enable countries to take action in respect of COVID-19 without fear of retribution under trade laws. While the United States has been willing to support a TRIPS Waiver for vaccines, there remain a number of opponents to a TRIPS Waiver – including the European Union, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. This paper makes the case that international intellectual property law should accommodate a People's Vaccine.

Waiving COVID-19 Vaccine Patents: A Bad Idea and a Dangerous Precedent

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J Pitts ◽  
Robert Popovian ◽  
Wayne Weingarden
Keyword(s):  
Patent Protection ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Foundational Principle ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
Triple Play ◽  
Research Investments ◽  
The Devil

The Biden Administration believes that suspending COVID-19 vaccine patents will expedite the swift development of high quality “cheap” versions of existing vaccines and hasten the pandemic’s end. This view is dangerously wrong. Vaccinating the world is essential, but temporarily waiving patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines (also known as “compulsory licensing”) will actually slow their availability to the developing world.   While providing no gain, compulsory licensing promises lots of pain. Waiving patent protection discourages cutting-edge research investments, which in turn produce breakthrough treatments not just for COVID-19, but for other diseases, like cancer. Weakening these protections would be anti-patient and counterproductive.   The reality is that, in order to save the world, we must all work together as partners. The remarkable speed with which we developed diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines to combat COVID-19 points to the need for more collaboration, not less. Patents are a foundational principle upon which that success rests.   While the policy of temporarily waiving patents seems fair and humanitarian, the devil is in the details.  Such a policy will not result in a single citizen of the developing world getting vaccinated one minute sooner. In fact, the unintended consequences are the reverse. More confusion, lower quality, less transnational cooperation. A triple play of disastrous global proportions.

The TRIPS Patent Protection Provisions and Their Effects on Transferring Climate Change Technologies to LDCs and Poor Developing Countries: A Critical Appraisal

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khorsed ZAMAN
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Green Technologies ◽  
Compulsory Licensing

Despite the existence of almost eighty international agreements and legal instruments, there has not been a marked development in the transfer of climate change technologies to poor and the least developing countries. This article investigates the role of intellectual property rights (IPDs) and scrutinizes the effects of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on the transfer of these technologies. It explores the TRIPS patent protection provisions and examines the associated flexibilities like compulsory licensing and parallel import options in the context of the transfer of climate change technologies. It finally concludes that the TRIPS patent protection rules, including the existing flexibilities, are one of the biggest impediments to the transfer of these technologies to poor and least developed countries. New agreements or promises on the transfer of green technologies would be fruitless if these TRIPS rules are not amended.

Patents, Technology Adaptation, and Exports to Developing Countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1850251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristie Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact

This paper conducts a disaggregated analysis of high technology trade to determine which high technology goods, if any, developed countries export in the presence of stronger developing country patent rights. One argument for implementing strong patent rights in developing countries is that doing so will attract high technology exports from industrialized countries, which should consequently lead to economic growth. However, the impact of patent rights on high technology exports is not identical across all industries. This paper postulates that the role of developing country patent rights in increasing high technology imports depends on the production and adaptation costs of foreign innovating firms, and the usefulness of the high technology good in developing country production processes. When the cost of adapting a foreign innovation for use in developing countries is relatively low, and when the innovation is highly useful in the domestic production processes of developing countries, strengthening patent protection has little impact on attracting foreign innovations. However, when the cost of adapting the good for use in developing countries is relatively high, patent protection can be used as a policy tool to limit competition, raise the price received by innovating firms, and, ultimately, attract foreign high technology goods from abroad.

Potential Threats to Patent Rights in Climate-Friendly Technologies

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-254
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Clean Technologies ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
Significant Barrier ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

The transfer of climate-friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries has been identified in international forums as a key factor in efforts to mitigate climate change. Commentators and negotiators have argued, however, that efforts to transfer climate-friendly technologies from developed countries to developing countries have fallen far short of what is needed. Although a host of barriers play a role in the pace of transfer of clean technologies, such as lack of financial resources, inadequate infrastructure, trade barriers, and lack of skilled workers to name a few, intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been accused of being a particularly significant barrier. Developing countries have made strong proposals to severely curtail IPRs on clean technologies, particularly patent rights. These proposals present potential threats to patent rights on clean technologies in developing countries and include expanded compulsory licensing, excluding clean technologies from patenting, and revoking existing patent rights on clean technologies in developing countries. The motivation for such proposals stem largely from theoretical considerations, when, in fact, recent studies provide evidence that patent rights are not a barrier to the transfer of clean technologies to the developing world and, to the contrary, are more likely facilitating the diffusion of clean technologies in developing countries.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document