Simon Barber in SA Business Day on WH meeting with Pharmaceutical companies

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

This is Simon Barber's recent report in the SA Business Day 
about the SA/US trade dispute.  He says that the White House
held a closed door meeting with the pharmaceutical industry
on the negotiations on the 11th.  The WH has not been returning
my phone calls, and blew off a meeting with Representative
Sanders and others last week on this issue.  PhRMA has
reportedly been calling in chits to undermine the proposed
deal, and it does not appear as though a deal is in hand.

   Jamie

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               Drugs patent wrangle nears end
               Litigants notify Pretoria High Court they have
agreed on 'general principles of a resolution' 			

               Simon Barber
               Business Day (South Africa)
               12 August 1999 

               WASHINGTON - The court challenge lodged by SA, US
and other multinational drugs companies against legislation
designed to reduce medical costs, but seen as threatening
patents, is close to settlement, a US industry representative
said yesterday. 

               The Pretoria High Court, where the matter has been
pending since early last year, has been notified by the litigants
- the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association and 41
co-applicants - that "general principles of a resolution" have
been agreed. 

               Tom Bombelles of Pharamaceutical Manufacturers and
Research of America, the industry lobby, who attended a
closed-door White House meeting yesterday said "we are hopeful
from talks with the new health minister (Manto shabalala-Msimang)
that a mutually agreeable solution can be reached". 

               The long-running dispute centres on clause 15c of
the 1997 SA Medicines and Related Substances Act and the power it
apparently gives the health minister to ignore pharmaceutical
patents as a means to obtain drugs at lower prices than offered
by the patent holders. 

               The US trade representative's office has placed SA
on its "watchlist" of countries it believes are not properly
protecting intellectual property rights and withheld new trade
benefits for certain SA products. 

               Vice-President Al Gore has been pressing for a
compromise on a government-to-government basis while the court
action runs its course. 

               He says the US government would have no objection
if the SA government sought to purchase drugs outside
patent-holder marketing channels, or licensed third parties to
make copies of patented drugs, so long as this was done in a
Trips-consistent (trade-related intellectual property consistent)
manner. 

               The industry fears the administration is dropping
its policy of pressing trading partners to observe a higher
standard of patent protection - "Trips-plus" than the Trips
parties originally agreed to.

               Under the bilateral deal SA would provide a
statement committing itself to honour Trips. 

               The US trade representative is not satisfied with
SA's drafts. Sources said the vice-president's office was seeking
to overcome that problem by proposing the two governments sign a
"framework agreement" under which SA would make the same pledge. 

               Gore would use this agreement to press the trade
representative to drop SA from the "watchlist". Resolution of the
case would clearly assist Gore's effort to defuse the issue in
the US. 

               Although the proposed terms for the court
settlement are unknown, the outcome is expected to be closer
co-operation between the private sector and government in
confronting the AIDS crisis. 

               "We want to be, and are, part of the solution,"
Bombelles said, but it had to be acknowledged that "intellectual
property should not be allowed to be characterised as an
impediment to health-care solutions".