Access to Medicines, Article 30 of TRIPS in the Doha Declaration and an Anthropological Critique of International Treaty Negotiations

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daya Shanker
Keyword(s):  
Access To Medicines ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Treaty Negotiations ◽  
Anthropological Critique ◽  
Doha Declaration

scholarly journals COMPULSORY LICENSING MECHANISM UNDER INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL LAW

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Aslan H Abashidze ◽  
Vladislav S Malichenko
Keyword(s):  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Strong Argument ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Price Negotiations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Doha Declaration

The article highlights the main steps in the formation of compulsory licensing mechanism before the establishment of the World Trade Organization, and analyzes the main provisions of this mechanism implementation under the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration. Based on the analysis of examples from different regions of the world, the article determines the main advantages of using compulsory licensing with regard to expand of access to medicines, possible impact on quality of the medicinal products being produced and the investment attractiveness of the countries applying this mechanism are assessed. The purpose of this article is to analyze the main approaches to the implementation of compulsory licensing in order to determine the most effective strategy for using this mechanism in the Russian Federation in order to expand the availability of drug therapy for the treatment of life-threatening diseases. Based on the impact of compulsory licensing implementation, the author concludes that it does not correspond to the objectives of the Russian pharmaceutical industry development identified as a priority by Russian Government. Despite a possibility of using compulsory licensing under regulation of many countries, this mechanism is implemented rarely. A possibility of issuing a compulsory licensing is a strong argument in price negotiations with producers. According to the authors position, implementation of compulsory licensing has to be preceded by cost containment mechanism, primarily based on negotiations with producers.

Disabled People’s Fight for Rights in South Korea and Japan

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (827) ◽  
pp. 233-239
Author(s):  
Celeste L. Arrington
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Social Supports ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Reasonable Accommodations ◽  
Treaty Negotiations ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms

Long considered objects of pity and welfare assistance, people with disabilities in South Korea and Japan are increasingly treated as rights-bearers. Through activism, litigation, and involvement in international treaty negotiations, Koreans and Japanese with disabilities spurred reforms that created new anti-discrimination protections and obligations to provide reasonable accommodations, access, employment, and social supports. These policy changes also signal a notably more legalistic approach to governance, particularly in South Korea, because they include more detailed rules and formal rights, more enforcement mechanisms like fines, and better recourse to judicial or other dispute resolution bodies.

The WTO Medicines Decision: World Pharmaceutical Trade and the Protection of Public Health

2005 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Trips Agreement ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
The World ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Pharmaceutical Trade ◽  
Doha Declaration

On November 14,2001, the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, meeting in Doha, Qatar, adopted the Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (Doha Declaration). The declaration affirms that the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights “can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all,” and it reaffirms that the Agreement “provide[s] flexibility for this purpose.” The Doha Declaration mandated further negotiations on one important subject, providing in its paragraph 6: “We recognize that WTO Members with insufficient or no manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector could face difficulties in making effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement. We instruct the Council for TRIPS to find an expeditious solution to this problem … .“

scholarly journals Toward an Understanding of State Behavior in Prolonged International Negotiations

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Downie
Keyword(s):  
International Negotiations ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
Treaty Negotiations ◽  
Sign Change ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
International Climate Negotiations

Abstract Many of the most significant international treaty negotiations take years, and sometimes decades, to conclude. The international climate negotiations, trade negotiations, and law of the sea negotiations are all examples. Yet, notwithstanding their common occurrence and importance, prolonged international negotiations are not well understood. In these negotiations, state preferences are not fixed, but fluid, as negotiating positions change. This temporal dimension of prolonged negotiations is insufficiently captured by existing theories of international negotiations, which, by virtue of their focus on individual negotiation outcomes at one point in time, tend to be static in their analysis. This article combines an analysis of existing theories of international negotiations with the findings of an empirical study of the climate change negotiations. It reveals a series of internal and external factors distinct to prolonged international negotiations, emphasizes the importance of the temporal dimension, and explains how and why the negotiating positions and the type of agreements states are prepared to sign change over time. Building on these variables, state behavior in prolonged international negotiations can be usefully conceived of as (at different points in time) either an immature or mature game, in which strategic opportunities arise at different phases of the game for networked actors to constructively influence state behavior. Eight strategies are suggested that traditionally weak actors can employ to steer prolonged international negotiations toward their preferred outcome.

scholarly journals THEORIES OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES IN THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY (SADC)

Obiter ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lonias Ndlovu ◽  
Amos Saurombe
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Southern African Development Community ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
African Development ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Parallel Importation ◽  
Doha Declaration

Despite the adoption of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Declaration on the Agreement on Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health in 2001, which unequivocally affirmed WTO members’ rights to use compulsory licences and other TRIPS flexibilities to access essential medicines, thirteen years on, developing countries and least developed countries are still grappling with access to medicines issues and a high disease burden. Despite some well-researched and eloquent arguments to the contrary, it is a trite fact that patents remain an impediment to access to medicines by encouraging monopolistic prices. In the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a number of possible solutions to the access to medicines problem, such as local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, using compulsory licences, using parallel importation and investing in research and innovation, have been raised. This paper looks at the possibility of solving the SADC access-to-medicines problem through rewarding innovation and investment into diseases of the poor, by applying the rewards theory of patents. After an initial exposition of theories of intellectual property in general, the paper specifically looks at the rewards theory and contextualizes it to the SADC situation, and comes to the conclusion that the theory may point to one of the viable solutions to the access-to-medicines problem in the region.

scholarly journals Access to Medicines, BRICS Alliances, and Collective Action

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 345-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter K. Yu
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Trips Agreement ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
Regional Trade ◽  
The World ◽  
Doha Declaration ◽  
Special Arrangement

On December 6, 2005, shortly before the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, WTO member states agreed to accept a protocol of amendment to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPs Agreement”). This amendment sought to provide a permanent solution to implement paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (“Doha Declaration”). If ratified, the new article 31bis of the TRIPs Agreement will allow countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity to import generic versions of on-patent pharmaceuticals.To facilitate the supply of essential medicines to countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity, article 31bis(3) creates a special arrangement not only for the affected countries, but also for those belonging to a regional trade agreement. Such an arrangement allows less developed countries to aggregate their markets to generate the purchasing power needed to make the development of an indigenous pharmaceutical industry attractive.

The Use of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (2001): A Review of Implementation Experiences in the Developing Countries

2012 ◽  
pp. 186-209
Author(s):  
Alexandra Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Access To Medicines ◽  
Trips Agreement ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Trade Regime ◽  
Council Decision ◽  
Internal Barriers ◽  
Doha Declaration

Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (2001) recognized the difficulty of some WTO member states in using the compulsory licensing flexibility allowed in the TRIPS Agreement due to their lack of local pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities. However, there has been almost no implementation by countries of the subsequent WTO General Council decision of 30th August, 2003 which was designed to resolve this Paragraph 6 issue. This is due to the existence of various impediments – generally in the form of external and internal barriers. A comparative analysis is undertaken of the implementation of the Council Decision in two countries with varying levels of development and with different obligations with regards to enforcement of the TRIPS Agreement. It is shown that external barriers such as proliferation of bilateral agreements have more impeding effect on developing countries such as South Africa which are already part of the full TRIPS compliance regime. Conversely, internal barriers such as institutional and structural drawbacks have more of an impact in Least Developing Countries (LDCs) such as Bangladesh which have been given a transition period for TRIPS compliance and are not yet fully susceptible to external pressures of the international trade regime. The increased preference of countries to use alternative innovative mechanisms such as the Medicines Patent Pool to improve access to medicine outside the framework of the global IP/Trade regime reiterates the unworkability of the Council Decision in promoting access to medicines.

Remote Control: TPP’s Administrative Law Requirements as Megaregulation

2019 ◽  
pp. 384-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Mertenskötter ◽  
Richard B. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Remote Control ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Regulatory Decision ◽  
Treaty Negotiations ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
Domestic Regulation

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) includes many and varied administrative law obligations for the parties’ domestic regulation and administration which form an integral part of its megaregulation project. These treaty requirements for regulatory procedures operate as instruments of transnational remote control by empowering private actors to use the procedures to pursue and defend their interests in other states. To create this remote control, TPP uses rules and structures for regulatory decision-making that reflect a US understanding of administrative law and its implicit regulatory capitalist model for the structuring of state–market relations. To explain how remote control works, we synthesize McNollgast’s conception of regulatory procedures in the purely domestic context as instruments of political control and Putnam’s theorization of international treaty negotiations as a two-level game. We show how procedural obligations in TPP are designed to stack the deck to favor certain interests—business firms rather than environmental and social interests—and why treaty negotiators may find it easier to agree on procedures than on substantive commitments.

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