On the TRIPS agreement (Sharon Bowles MEP)

Sharon Bowles MEP <info@sharonbowles.org.uk>

On the TRIPS agreement

July 11, 2007 12:00 AM
By Sharon Bowles MEP in European Parliament

The TRIPS amendment is both overdue and ahead of its time. It is overdue in that, for a long time, there has been a need to give poorer countries assisted access to drugs. It is ahead of its time because the extension of patent regimes to cover drugs in India and other countries in 2005 has not yet bitten. It takes years for a drug to get from development through clinical trials and it is only after that that this amendment might come into play. But it could come into play earlier if the Indian patent office is not upheld in its line of rejecting patents for minor modifications of older drugs.

Now the amendment alone cannot solve the problem that generic drugs still available now are not affordable, but it will establish in TRIPs that production for export legitimately comes under compulsory licensing and so also loosens the constraint of the legitimate interests of the patent owner, at least as regards territory, in other articles.