Candace WilliamsBrazil and Thailand’s Response to TRIPS and TRIPS-Plus: How can the internationalcommunity balance needs of access and innovation?What is TRIPS?Born with the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994, the Agreement on Trade-relatedAspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) lays down universal minimum standards for protection of copyrights, trademarks, patents, geographical indications, unfair competition, tradesecrets, and other aspects of intellectual property. The agreement is enforced by the WTO, whichhas the right to levy economic sanctions. All nations who want to become members of the WTOmust agree to the package. The WTO and other proponents of the agreement hailed it as the“greatest trade agreement in history” because of its sweeping reform of intellectual propertyrights (IPRs). The United States, Japan, and the European Union take TRIPS a step further intheir bilateral trade agreements by attaching “TRIPS-Plus” or “US-Plus” IPRs to tradeagreements. These agreements extend the provisions beyond the original WTO TRIPSagreement.What standards does TRIPS place on pharmaceutical drugs?There are three main standards that TRIPS places on pharmaceutical drugs. First, pharmaceutical products and micro-organisms are patentable for 20 years after the inventor files a patentapplication. Second, imported patent rights must be upheld and cannot be discriminated againstin national IPR policies. Third, patent holders are granted exclusive marketing rights. Althoughthere seems to be a lot of flexibility for nations to tailor intellectual property laws to fit their development goals, the asymmetrical power relationships between developed countries,developing countries, producers, and consumers, has a large impact on the ability of states to usethis freedom to their advantage.Multilateral and bilateral TRIPS-Plus agreements increase the number of restrictions on genericdrugs, compulsory licenses, parallel importation and other means of opening drug access. For example, NAFTA and CAFTA are seen as have provisions that prevent the marketing of off- patent drugs.What’s the big deal?Access to pharmaceutical products is a major development issue. For example, out of the 42million people infected with HIV and the 6 million with full-blown AIDS in the developingworld, only 300,000 are receiving anti-retroviral treatments (and 100,000 of these reside inBrazil).
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