[e-drug] US allows South Africa to Ignore Patents for 5 years

[e-drug@usa.healthnet.org]

E-DRUG: US allows South Africa to Ignore Patents for 5 years
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[From Business Day, South Africa. Copied as fair use. NN]

November 5, 2001

Simon Barber, Washington Correspondent

No retaliation over five years even if SA violates pharmaceuticals'
rights

THE BUSH administration says it will take no action, either in the
World
Trade Organisation (WTO) or bilaterally, if SA violates the WTO
agreement on intellectual property (Trips) to obtain affordable drugs
for HIV/AIDS and "other pandemics".

This moratorium would last five years and would appear to lift one of
the remaining obstacles to the provision of cheap antiretroviral
treatment for HIV-positive South Africans.

A senior US trade official confirmed on Friday that during the period
there would be no US retaliation even if SA broke a US company's
pharmaceutical patents without due process of law or compensation.

Options the US would forego include denial of African Growth and
Opportunity Act trade preferences and the use of blacklisting and
sanctions procedures under section 301 of the Trade Act.

The safe harbour would apply only to the violation of patents related
to
the treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the official
said.
He was speaking on behalf of US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

Despite the limitations on time and product, the offer goes beyond the
current policy inherited from the Clinton administration, which is not
to object if trading partners like SA use Trips-tolerated compulsory
licensing and parallel imports to meet their needs for affordable
medicine.

Before 1999 the US reserved, and exercised, the right to penalise such
practices unilaterally.

The senior trade official also made it clear the US wanted the world's
poorest countries, most of which are in Africa, to be excused from
having to honour any pharmaceutical patents until 2016 pushing back by
a
decade the current 2006 deadline for Trips compliance by all
developing
nations.

This 10-year extension would be available for countries officially
classified by the World Bank as least developed, and therefore not for
India or other richer but still developing economies that have
exercised
their right to defer full implementation of Trips.

In theory, the US offer would enable a company like India's Cipla,
which
copies patented drugs without the patent owners' permission, to start
manufacturing unauthorised generics in, for example, Mozambique or
Tanzania for sale locally and in other least-developed countries.

These proposals are part of an effort led by the US, Switzerland,
Japan
and Australia to block what they see as an attempt to have
pharmaceutical patent protections gutted at the WTO ministerial
meeting
in Doha this week.

Brazil is spearheading a drive, nominally on behalf of poor countries,
to have ministers officially declare that "nothing in the Trips
agreement shall prevent members (of the WTO) taking measures to
protect
public health".

Supporters of the Brazil plan say the US offer is an attempt to
conquer
developing nations by dividing them.

Patrick Wadula reports that trade and industry ministry spokesman
Edwin
Smith said last night: "Our problem with Trips has nothing to do with
patents and trademarks but access to medicines affordably." He said it
would be difficult to comment on the matter until the SA government
had
received an official statement from the US.


--
To send a message to E-Drug, write to: e-drug@usa.healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe e-drug OR unsubscribe e-drug
To contact a person, send a message to: owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html