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November 16, 2006
TRIPping Up
When countries join the World Trade Organization, they have to agree to abide by the patents of other members. It would not be fair, after all, to let one country make and then sell a product on the cheap when the labor that went into inventing it is protected by a patent in the product's home country.
WTO rules governing intellectual property, known as TRIPS, have some exceptions. One is around patents on prescription drugs, whose high cost under patent puts them out of reach in some parts of the world. Some countries, particularly poorer countries, have the right to break a patent in case of a public health emergency. Though the AIDS rates in parts of the developing world would qualify as such an emergency, drug companies have fought countries that try to break patents and make cheap generics, or import them from countries that do.
Countries will try to hammer out a new version of TRIPS in December. A primer on the key issues, from the Consumer Project on Technology, which advocates for a liberal interpretation of TRIPS, is here.
Doctors Without Borders' Campaign for Access to Essential Medicine reports that prices have risen since TRIPS came along in 2001.
And a new Oxfam report says that 74 percent of AIDS medications are still under patent, and that the 77 percent of people living in Africa who lack access to any such drugs do so because of pressure to comply with patents.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at November 16, 2006 02:23 AM