Memorandum by World Trade Organisation
We would like to thank you for your E-mail of
30 January 2008 addressed to the Director-General's office with
regard to the Call for Evidence sent out by the Committee with
20 questions on the topic "Acting through intergovernmental
organisations to control the spread of communicable diseases",
on which the WTO, among other intergovernmental organisations,
has been asked to provide a written submission.
The WTO 's submission refers to question 14
as follows:
WTO Members have devoted considerable effort,
both at the time of the negotiation of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement)
and subsequently, to ensuring that the WTO rules on the protection
of intellectual property are properly balanced, especially in
the light of concerns about access to medicines in developing
countries.
The TRIPS Agreement itself contains considerable
flexibility in regard to patent rights, for example transition
periods, compulsory licensing, government use, other limited exceptions
and parallel imports. A short description can be found in Annex
1.
In 2001, following an extensive debate in the
WTO on the implication of the TRIPS rules for access to medicines,
the WTO Members adopted a Ministerial Declaration on the TRIPS
Agreement and Public Health (Annex 2). The main thrust of this
was to emphasize the flexibility available in the TRIPS Agreement
for Members to meet these challenges, their right to use it to
the full and the need for a pro-public health interpretation and
implementation of TRIPS rules. The Declaration also contained
some important clarifications of TRIPS flexibilities, notably
in regard to compulsory licensing and parallel imports.
Following up on this Declaration, WTO Members
have adopted a number of Decisions: in 2002, two Decisions were
adopted to extend the transition period for least developed countries
in regard to pharmaceutical products to 2016 (Annexes 3 and 4).
In 2003, a waiver Decision was adopted to provide additional flexibility
in one area where it had been agreed that the TRIPS rules did
not provide sufficient scope for addressing public health problems.
This gives additional flexibility for countries to be able to
provide compulsory licences specifically for the purposes of producing
to export to address public health problems in other countries
which do not have sufficient manufacturing capacity to be able
to produce under a compulsory licence themselves (Annex 5). In
2005, Members agreed to amend the TRIPS Agreement to make the
system established under the waiver Decision a permanent feature
of the TRIPS Agreement (Annex 6).
You will find annexes 1 to 6 attached and further
information can be found on the following WTO website dedicated
to TRIPS and public health: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/pharmpatent_e.htm.
Thank you for inviting the WTO to contribute
in this topic.
March 2008
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