[Ip-health] Inside Trade: LARSON EXPECTS LITTLE FURTHER DEBATE ON TRIPS AND HEALTH IN WTO]

[James Love]

The TACD meets with Larson (and the EU) about this issue next week in Washington, DC.  Jamie


Inside US Trade
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LARSON EXPECTS LITTLE FURTHER DEBATE ON TRIPS AND HEALTH IN WTO
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Date: November 30, 2001 

A top State Dept. official said this week that the recent ministerial
declaration on intellectual property rules and public health has removed a
potentially dangerous item from the World Trade Organization's agenda, and
trading partners will not push for further clarifications of compulsory
licensing rules.

However, both industry representatives and Geneva trade officials disputed
that view, which was expressed by Undersecretary of State for Economic
Affairs Alan Larson Nov. 28 at a European Institute Forum. Instead, these
sources said a push by health activists together with developing countries
on the question of compulsory licenses would dominate the agenda of the
Council on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights for the next year
under work mandated by the Nov. 14 declaration on TRIPS and public health.

At issue is whether countries without pharmaceutical manufacturers can
issue compulsory licenses for manufacture of patented drugs in a third
country. Larson told the European Institute he sensed that countries would
not pursue the issue.

“There's going to be a discussion in the WTO about compulsory licensing for
export but my reading of the room at Doha is that no one is seriously
interested in this, not the Africans, not the middle income countries with
generic drug producing capabilities,” Larson said.

But a trade official from one key African country disputed that view. “This
matter is not put to rest. I think it is going to occupy most of our time
this year,” the official said. “That is a concern of most least developed
and developing countries.”

Pharmaceutical industry representatives also do not believe this issue has
been put to bed, either by developing countries or by health activists like
Doctors without Borders, Act-Up and Oxfam. Officials in the office of the
U.S. Trade Representative believe they could face the same public relations
juggernaut on this issue that they faced from developing countries and
health activists in Doha, industry sources said.

The pharmaceutical industry's main worry is not the loss of market share in
poor countries issuing compulsory licenses, but whether the generic
substitutes will leak into markets of commercial significance or undercut
their patents in countries where they are likely to be manufactured, such
as India, Brazil or Argentina. Industry wants the discussion in the TRIPS
council to first identify which countries a clarification would cover and
which of these actually have patents on pharmaceuticals that would need to
be overridden in order to gain access to medicines.

For health activists, the issue is whether there will still be generic
competition for patented drugs -- particularly those used to treat AIDS --
once countries like India, with its developed generic drugs industry, must
abide by patent rules for pharmaceuticals in 2005.

Larson said the solution would be found not through changes to the TRIPS
agreement, but through a global fund to treat infectious diseases and from
the “contributions of pharmaceuticals from Western countries.” But the
African trade official noted that the issue of access to medicines was not
limited in the declaration simply to dealing with pandemics like AIDS but
to the broader issue of public health. The question of a fund to deal with
this issue was important, but outside the purview of the WTO's work.

Larson also called for U.S.-EU cooperation in keeping the issue of TRIPS
and public health off the table. The EU has tried to broker solutions in
the area of compulsory licensing, but has been reined in by member states
(Inside U.S. Trade, Oct. 26, p.1)



“I hope as we move forward, Europe and the United States can work together
to stress the notion we have removed this issue from the area of public
debate. This is really off the table,” Larson said, noting the U.S. had
been successful in preventing a public health exception to the TRIPS
agreement.





The EU's WTO Ambassador Carlo Trojan said the compulsory licensing issue
was one of the issues that needed to be addressed, but he hoped it would
not be in the atmosphere of polemics that prevailed at Doha. The EU would
engage with its trading partners, including the U.S., on the issue, Trojan
said. He also backed Larson's hope that the declaration agreed at Doha
would dispel any notion that there was a conflict between TRIPS and public
health.