Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

India scores major TRIPS victory at WTO

In a significant breakthrough, India secured at the World Trade Organisation conference in Doha a declaration on tackling major health problems by allowing poor countries access to cheap drugs.

The issue of patent rules - known as Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights or TRIPS - has bitterly divided developed and developing countries.

WTO officials see resolving it as essential to correcting the image that freer trade favours the rich over the poor.

And an option proposed by India and other developing countries that TRIPS should not prevent WTO members from taking measures to protect public health was approved at the fourth five-day WTO ministerial conference.

The conference further affirmed member countries' rights to "interpret and implement" TRIPS in a manner supportive of the need to protect public health and ensure access to medicines for all.

The declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health is a shot in the arm for New Delhi. The Indian government has introduced the Patent Amendment Bill in the Parliament that provides for compulsory licensing of drugs.

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Murasoli Maran led a large number of developing nations through an intense process of negotiations to arrive at the declaration.

"The declaration clearly recognises the gravity of public health problems, specially those resulting from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics afflicting the developing world and the adverse impact of intellectual property protection on the prices of medicines," an Indian official said.

"This is a significant development since serious concerns have been expressed by civil society within and outside India on the pernicious effects of TRIPS on the availability and access to essential medicines," the official said.

"The declaration will go a 1ong way in ensuring the passage of the Bill in the Parliament," he said.

"By confirming that TRIPs does not and should not come in the way of the government's dealing with public health concerns, the conference has sent a powerful message to the world that concerns of developing countries are being addressed," the official added.

At the inaugural session of the conference, India had maintained the availability and affordability of essential medicines was a "universal human rights issue and the conference must send out a clear message by recognising that TRIPS should not prevent member countries from taking effective measures for public health."

The declaration recognises the existing flexibility in the TRIPS agreement, including granting of compulsory licences and the freedom of the countries to determine the grounds on which such licences can be granted.

Member countries also have the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency, to establish their own regime for expansion of intellectual property rights and have the freedom to undertake parallel importation.

Developed countries have also agreed to provide incentives to their own pharmaceutical firms to promote and encourage technology transfer to least developed countries to augment their manufacturing capacity and to enable them make effective use of compulsory licensing under TRIPS.

The declaration also prolongs LDCs' exemption from patenting obligations from 2006 to 2016.

Indo-Asian News Service
Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report