Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A joint symposium of the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization this week included several panels on how trade, public health and intellectual property could positively interact to increase access to medicines.
Negotiations have been ongoing at the World Trade Organization over the extension of a waiver allowing least-developed countries not to grant or enforce intellectual property rights on pharmaceutical products.
A lively keynote address urging international organisations to adopt a fact-based view of the world and new ways of segmenting countries in an increasingly convergent world, set the scene for the annual trilateral symposium on public health, intellectual property and trade taking place at the World Trade Organization today.
Trade, health, and intellectual property came together today as the heads of three specialised international organisations held an annual symposium to stimulate discussions on how the three can best help public health, and notably access to medicines in developing countries.
International trade agreements are sometimes demonised as the Grand Plan imposed by major powers in cahoots with multinational corporations. Intellectual property rights is a particular target, as is the case currently with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and previously with the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). "The Making of the TRIPS Agreement", the insightful, unofficial collected memoirs of 17 of the agreement’s key authors, plus one editor, challenges that view in two ways, writes Peter Ungphakorn.
Informal negotiations at the World Trade Organization between least developed countries (LDCs) and some developed countries over a public health extension for LDCs could not be finalised in time to be taken to the intellectual property committee meeting today and…
The World Trade Organization intellectual property committee today addressed exports of cheaper medicines, and disputes that could arise even when there is no WTO violation. Tomorrow it will decide the hot-button issue of how long least-developed countries have before they must comply with international IP trade rules – on which LDCs said today they are ready to talk about a deal.
The European Council has confirmed that it will support the request of least developed countries at the World Trade Organization for the extension of a waiver of intellectual property obligations for pharmaceutical products.
The intellectual property committee of the World Trade Organization is meeting this week with a full agenda. The highlight of the agenda is the extension of a waiver allowing least developed countries to choose not to enforce intellectual property rights on pharmaceutical products. Also high on the agenda is a decision on whether to extend a moratorium banning IP from complaints not linked to any breached WTO agreement, and the annual review of special compulsory licence for exporting pharmaceutical products.
A carefully agreed 2003 waiver from international intellectual property trade rules to allow export of medicines made under compulsory licence to benefit needy countries has been quietly implemented by a large number of World Trade Organization members, according to a new analytical paper from the WTO. The analysis explores the limited use of the waiver to date and how the situation has changed since then, providing grist for a potential fresh look at the provision at this week’s annual WTO review of IP and public health.