TRIPS

© Sheila Shettle

What TRIPS is: a one-size-fits-all approach
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (or TRIPS Agreement) set the standards for intellectual property protection in the world today.  It came into force on 1st January 1995 and is binding on all Member States of the World Trade Organization (WTO).  

The TRIPS Agreement sets minimum standards in the international rules governing patents, including on medicines. Countries that are members of the WTO (today, more than 150 countries) agree to certain common standards in the way they enact and implement their patent laws.  These standards include, amongst others, that patents be given for a minimum of 20 years; that patents may be given both for products and processes; and that pharmaceutical test data be protected against ‘unfair commercial use’.

In other words, though there is not such thing as a single international patent law, TRIPS represents a harmonisation of patent laws.  The industry had been pushing for this kind of move for decades.  It’s a one-size-fits-all policy that aims at extending the stricter patenting laws previously used in industrialised countries to developing countries, regardless of their radically different social and economic conditions.

Developing country members of the WTO generally had until the beginning of 2000 to implement TRIPS.  Some countries were given a longer transition period – those like India that did not grant patents on pharmaceutical products were given until 2005, and least developed countries were initially given until 2006.

TRIPS Plus: going even further than TRIPS
In recent years, many developing countries have been coming under pressure to enact or implement tougher or more restrictive conditions in their patent laws than are required by the TRIPS Agreement – these are known as ‘TRIPS plus’ provisions.  Countries are by no means obliged by international law to do this, but many, such as Brazil, China or Central American states have had no choice but to adopt these, as part of trade agreements with the United States or the European Union. These have a disastrous impact on access to medicines.  Read more

What TRIPS isn’t: a definition of what can and what can’t be patented
TRIPS sets some minimum standards for patents, but the question of what deserves to be patented is left for countries to determine. The Agreement only says that patents should be granted for new, inventive and useful inventions - but it does not define these terms.  Deciding whether a new formulation (producing a pill version of a drug that formerly came as a powder, for instance) or a new combination (combining two or more old molecules into a new pill) deserves a new twenty-year patent for example is a prerogative of countries, and is not determined by the WTO texts.  

Countries should therefore determine what kind of inventions deserves patents in the area of pharmaceuticals, in light of their own social and economic conditions. Some governments, such as Brazil, Thailand or India, have done precisely that.  In today’s world, for many patients, that decision can be a question of life or death.  

The need to restore a balance: the Doha Declaration
Implementation of the TRIPS Agreement’s IP standards is having a considerable impact on access to medicines and public health.  By limiting competition and local manufacturing, the danger is that TRIPS extends high drug prices and worsens the access to medicines crisis.  

With TRIPS, life-saving medicines are considered in the same vein as mere consumer goods and the devastating impact of high prices is mostly ignored.  The balance between the private interests of the patent holder and the larger interests of society is severely skewed.  

It didn’t take long for the issue to come to a head.  In 2001, at the annual ministerial meeting of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, countries agreed to redress that imbalance, and firmly restated the primacy of health over commercial interests.  The ‘Doha Declaration’ reaffirmed countries’ right to use TRIPS safeguards such as compulsory licences or parallel importation to overcome patent barriers to promote access to medicines, and guided countries in their use.  One final significant achievement of Doha was to extend the deadline by which the least developed countries had to grant and enforce pharmaceutical patents, from 2006 to 2016.

Click here to read the text of the Doha declaration

Click here to read more about compulsory licenses and their use

 

An unsolved problem: the August 30th Decision
Thanks to the Doha Declaration, countries may be able to issue a compulsory licence to make their own generic versions of patented drugs – but how can a country with no drug industry do that?

In 2003, in what is known as the August 30th Decision, the World Trade Organization attempted to solve the problem.  Far from providing a solution, they have created a complex and cumbersome mechanism.  Nearly five years on, not a single patient has benefited from it. Read more

Read more:

MSF and patents

Patents and access

Patents and innovation

What is a patent?

Overcoming patent barriers

Milestones

What needs to happen