[Patents] Re: ePatents and Aids-Patents

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> This is a call for Aids-activists to join efforts of the Linux-communities
> to call for a lift on Aids-drugs. Both patents on softwares and patents on
> pharmaceutical discoveries are covered by the TRIPS, thus it is essential
> to combine efforts.

When is the next opportunity to change the TRIPS treaty or press for a
change?

I am maintaining a "TRIPS fallacy homepage"

        http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/trips/

which, while proving that the TRIPS treaty is not as bad as many patent
lobbyists claim it to be, it does provide them with arguments for a
no-limits patent system.  The patent universalism clauses should be
removed from TRIPS.

E.g. TRIPS sets only lower limits but not upper limits to the patent
system.  Art 1 explicitly allows any government to introduce as heavy
patent protection as they would like, but disallows governments from
employing weaker protection.  Art 33 demands a minimum of 20 years, Art 27
demands that this must apply to "all fields of technology".

There is no reason for this kind of patent expansionism to be written into
an international free trade treaty.  On the contrary, granting extensive
monopolies is a form of trade barrier.

I am not really competent to say how the patent system works in the fields
of AIDS drugs.   There is some evidence that shows that pharmaceutics and
chemistry are one of the very few fields where the patent system can
actually be shown to produce some positive results.  At the same time, by
extending patents to genes, the patent offices are probably serving only
themselves and a group of greedy investors.

We must find a common position that allows us to support something that
each of us is competent to support.  In the case of an international
harmonisation treaty like TRIPS, this is easy.  TRIPS is not about the
details of where patents should be applied and where not.  It is rather
about trade-related meta-rules of the patent system, such as that no
country should be discriminated.  It must be reduced to these aspects, and
any regulations of the patent universalist type ("minimum 20
years" ... "all fields of technology") must be
removed.  Instead some definitions must be introduced that limit the scope
of the patent system to "industrial solutions based on new knowledge of
natural phenomena" or the like, and place everything else outside of
the scope of the worldwide patent system in the sense of TRIPS.  Software
and genome patents would then be a special extra system of some countries,
and those countries would be accountable if they use such patents for
erecting trade monopolies.
  
> This message includes an article of the New York Times followed by
> comments.
 
> ----------
> "Loans to Buy AIDS Drugs Are Rejected by Africans"
> New York Times, August 22nd, 2000, page. A6
> By Swarns, Rachel L.
> 
>      South Africa and Namibia have refused the United States' offer
> of $1 billion in yearly loans to finance the purchase of AIDS drugs.
> The African countries stated that affordable drugs are needed and
> that the loans would only burden their economies and send them
> further into debt.  The U.S. Export-Import Bank made the loan
> offer to 24 southern African countries, but none have formally
> accepted the offer so far.  Developing countries have been urging
> the West to make less expensive anti-AIDS drugs and to allow poor
> countries to overcome patents in order to manufacture generic
> versions of the drugs.  Earlier this year, the Clinton
> administration issued an executive order promising not to
> interfere with African countries that did not follow American
> patent law to secure cheaper drugs.  Dr. Kalumbi Shangula, the
> permanent secretary for the Namibian Ministry of Health, believes
> that efforts to support generic drugs are more helpful than loan
> programs.  He stated that accepting the loans would send the
> country "deeply into debt."
> 
> Source: http://www.nytimes.com, ;
> [reproduced from Nigeria-Aids@egroups.com]
> 
> ----------
> 
> Comments:
> 
> The 26 patents on anti-infective and antri-retroviral drugs needed for
> Aids-related infections and for Aids-prevention are increasingly felt as a
> way to plunge developing countries into a second wave of loans. Those
> developing countries are calling to develop generic drugs.
> 
> Using a myriad of anti-infective drugs will help opportunistic infectious
> agents to develop multiple resistance to available drugs. This may mean
> that in a near future anti-infective drugs would become inefficient. If in
> the mean time, no vaccine system has been found to combat Aids, it may have
> drastic effects including the appearance of new aggressive genotypes of
> infectious agents (e.g. tuberculosis) that could affect humans who are not
> infected by the Hiv.
> 
> It is urgent that everyone (children, mothers, fathers, friends, etc.) give
> some thoughts to these problems and discuss it with whomever may help them
> to understand the consequences (nurse, MD, etc.).
> 
> The reason this is urgent may surprise you: because it will not occur
> overnight. This is the most dangerous aspect of Hiv/Aids: its rather slow
> impact is allowing on one hand Hiv to mutate into collections of cousin
> types (thus making the development of vaccines a cumbersome research
> project), and on a second hand to help opportunistic infections (e.g.
> hepatitis, syphilis, etc.) to develop resistance against currently
> available drugs. This means that we, that is everyone concerned on Earth
> (humans + primates susceptible of catching Hiv/Aids) must use those drugs
> in a very considerate fashion. You may be aware that inconsiderate use of
> anti-biotics has lead to resistance of diseases that are often transmitted
> during surgeries at general hospitals. The same principle applies to
> Hiv/Aids.
> 
> Meanwhile the capacity for citizens to keep on with preventive measures may
> not be indefinite. In Germany, the Aids-helpline (Stuttgart, NP-Han. Aug.
> 24, 2000, p. 23, http://www.aidshilfe.de) notes that the use of condoms is
> reducing and that there is an increasing trend for sex-parties without
> condoms. Less Germans are testing their Hiv-status (the
> Robert-Koch-Institut estimates in Germany the rate of new Hiv-infections
> per year to 2500 persons, with 37000 currently infected and 600 deaths
> caused by Aids - http://www.rki.de).
> 
> Space distribution of drugs is not the answer. Instead of having one set of
> anti-infective drugs per country/region, the World should have a planing of
> anti-infective drugs in time. The current and future patents on Aids-drugs
> will ruin efforts to organise a considerate use of our current
> anti-infective and anti-retroviral drugs. This speaks for a lift/exception
> of patents on Aids-drugs.
> 
> Christian
> 
> Some links:
> http://petition.eurolinux.org
> http://www.essentials.org
> http://www.globenet.org/ifi/calprague.htm ;
> http://membres.tripod.fr/praha2000
> http://www.inpeg.ecn.cz
> http://www.globenet.org/ifi
> http://attac.org/fra/toil/doc/gci.htm
>