[A2k] General Statement of TWN to 14th session of WIPO SCP

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

General Statement

Thank you chair for this opportunity.

I am making this statement on behalf of the third World Network (TWN).

During the last 15 years developing countries are coping with an
inequitable international patent regime as a fall out of the Agreement
on Trade Related aspects of intellectual property rights. (TRIPS).

It involves great amount of resource to cope with the implementation
of TRIPS patent regime. Developing countries are yet to come in terms
with the challenges paused by the compulsory product patent regime for
pharmaceuticals and patent protection for life forms.

  Developing countries are incorporating TRIPS flexibilities to
safeguard the critical public policy concerns coming out of TRIPS
patent regime. Against this background TWN feels that it is not the
right time to discuss harmonisation of patents.  The call for
harmonisation of patent law ignores the development disparity existing
among WIPO member states. Harmonisation would take away the policy
space of developing countries, which enjoyed by many developed
countries in the past.

There are lot of assumptions surrounding the patent system. One of the
important assumption is related the role of patent in stimulating
inventions.  This assumption is now being challenged.

The Commission on Public Intellectual Property, Innovation and Public
Health emphasized the inability of patent regime to stimulate the
research and development in the area of diseases conditions relevant
to developing countries especially Type II and Type III diseases.
Consequently, one can infer from the conclusions of the CIPIH that
patents are not stimulating any research and development to meet the
public health needs of developing countries.

The WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health,
Innovation and Intellectual Property, an outcome of the CIPIH process,
recommended the need for new incentives for research and development,
which delink cost of R&D from the price of the product.

According to the CIPIH report also shown the mismatch between the
number of patents on pharmaceuticals and the number of new molecular
entities obtained marketing approval.

There are also evidence now available on the abuse of patent rights to
prevent and innovation.  According to the European Competition
Commission inquiry report on pharmaceutical sector adopted by the
European Commission in 2009 state as follows.    =93The findings of the
inquiry suggest that in recent years originator companies have changed
their patent strategies. In particular, strategy documents of
originator companies confirm that some of them aimed at developing
strategies to extend the breadth and duration of their patent
protection.=94


The inquiry report further states that =93inquiry finds that individual
medicines are protected by up to nearly 100 product-specific patent
families, which can lead to up to 1,300 patents and/or pending patent
applications across the Member States=94.


These real situations challenge the assumption of patent as a tool for
stimulating R&D.  Similarly, there is littlie evidence on the role of
patents as a tool for facilitating technology transfer and foreign
direct investment. We urge the SCP to examine the truth behind some of
these assumptions. The SCP also needs to provide an opportunity to
interested member countries to present empirical evidence to show
whether these assumptions hold good in their country situation. This
is important because most of the preliminary studies quote these
assumptions, which do not reflect the reality especially in the
developing countries.

We hope to make intervention on preliminary studies during our
intervention under Agenda item 7.

Thank you for your attention and patience.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
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