E-drug: Lancet: USA-Morocco deal on extending drug patents
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Lancet, 6 December 2003
USA-Morocco deal may extend drug patents to 30 years
A free trade agreement due to be signed between Morocco and the
USA by the end of this year could threaten access to medicines,
several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) warned last week.
In separate statements, Morocco's Association de Lutte contre le
SIDA (ALCS) and Act Up Paris accused the USA of aggressively
pursuing a bilateral free trade agreement with Morocco to extend
provisions required by World Trade Organization (WTO). The
agreement could increase the duration of patent protection from its
current 20 years to nearly 30 years.
ALCS said countries that have already signed free trade agreements
with the USA have been forced to renounce some of their rights to
use generic drugs. But, according to ALCS, the USA-Morocco draft
agreement has infinitely "more constraining provisions" than those
signed by other countries. "If these provisions are ratified . . . [it] will
be a serious precedent for which the countries of the south will blame
Morocco, but these countries will continue to battle for access to
generic medicines", ALCS pointed out.
"The USA does not seem satisfied with the agreements made at an
international level and they are trying to push through bilateral and
regional agreements with stricter standards on intellectual property
than those agreed in the WTO", Sabina Voogd, Netherlands Ministry
of Foreign Affairs Policy Coherence Unit, told The Lancet. WTO
acknowledges that the TRIPS agreement should not stop countries
taking measures to protect public health.
One of the provisions in the proposed draft is to make up for delays in
the patent office. "But these extensions have nothing to do with
creating better inventions", comments Michael Davis (Cleveland State
University College of Law, Ohio, USA).
"The problem is that the only type of patents to benefit from the
extension are medical ones. It is not clear why an aeronautical patent,
for instance, should not get a similar extension", he says.
Moreover, according to Davis, the extra 3 years or so for finding new
uses of intellectual property is a perversion of patent law. He said: "A
new use is entitled to its own patent if it is inventive. If it is not
inventive, it is simply a violation of patent principles to extend the
patent for a non-inventive advance."
The generic industry employs thousands of people in Morocco and
helps to save the Health Ministry millions of dirhams per year. But
Gaelle Krikorian of Act Up Paris complains that generic
manufacturers are being excluded from the negotiations, which
threaten to destroy the domestic generic industry.
Khabir Ahmad
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