Fwd: TIIP Newsletter - Patents, Pharma & the 3rd World

[Carsten Svaneborg <svanebor@mpip-mainz.mpg.de>]

FYI:

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Subject: TIIP Newsletter - Patents, Pharma & the 3rd World
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 13:04:28 -0400
From: "TIIP Editor \(Jim Bessen\)" <tiip@netreach.net>
To: "TIIP Newsletter" <tiip@netreach.net>

Newsletter
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Issue 2003-3
Special Issue: Patents, Pharmaceuticals and the Third World

To view the contents click on:
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/tiip/index.htm

* * * *

This special issue of the TIIP newsletter was prompted by the report issued
by the United Kingdom Commission on Intellectual Property Rights,
"Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy."

The developed nations have used trade negotiations to leverage an
unprecedented extension of patent rights in the Third World. The World Trade
Organization's TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights)
treaty offers a bargain: in exchange for access to the markets of developed
countries, Third World countries must offer strong patent rights, including
patent protection for medicines. This threatens to drastically limit the
generic drug industry, currently the main source of affordable medicines in
many poor nations.

This issue of the newsletter discusses the report and specifically how
patent policy can be tailored both to encourage firms to develop new drugs
needed by poor nations and to provide those drugs affordably.

CONTENTS:

1. U.K. Commission Report

 F.M. Scherer provides some brief background on the Commission, summarizes
the report's main policy conclusions, and its significance.

2. Response to Professor Scherer

 John Barton, who chaired the U.K. Commission on Intellectual Property
Rights, responds to Scherer's assessment. He then goes on to examine two
important issues that were not resolved by the Commission, but which may be
quite important for making medicine affordable in the Third World.

3. A Proposed Solution

Jean O. Lanjouw makes a timely and innovative policy proposal that addresses
both the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to invest in the
development of new drugs and the need for poor nations to obtain affordable
medicines.

4. Inequality and Patent Policy

 Keith E. Maskus raises an important complication: economic inequality
affects the outcome of patent policy. He presents evidence that
pharmaceutical firms charge relatively high prices for drugs in poor
nations, selling mainly to the wealthy and ignoring the indigent majority.
If the goal of policy is to make medicines affordable for most or all
people, then policy may need to adjust for the nation's degree of
inequality.

5. Counterfeit Drugs

Kristina M. Lybecker points out another problem with the current policy.
TRIPS imposes requirements for patents, but provides no funds for
enforcement of patents and drug laws. In financially-strapped poor nations,
this means that generic drug manufacturers may be eliminated, but not drug
counterfeiters. Such an outcome makes both consumers and pharmaceutical
firms worse off.

-- James Bessen, Editor

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