[Ip-health] Pfizer CEO on Davos deal on para 6

[James Love]

http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2003/01/28/rtr860810.html

DAVOS-Pfizer's McKinnell says drug patent talks progress
Reuters, 01.28.03, 7:25 AM ET

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Big drugmakers and trade
negotiators have made progress on reviving stalled talks over how poor
countries can import key medicines they can't make themselves, Pfizer
Inc Chairman Henry McKinnell said on Tuesday.

Talks on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in
Davos helped clarify the debate over balancing poor countries' needs for
effective drugs against the need to protect pharmaceutical firms'
patents, he told Reuters in an interview.

"In my discussions with some of the trade negotiators -- not all, but
some -- in principle we're saying the same thing. The challenge comes in
putting that on paper," said McKinnell, whose company is the world's
biggest drugmaker.

"We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, we haven't done (a written
agreement), but I think we have made a major step here."

Accords on drug patents and cutting farm support are key potential
stumbling blocks to world trade reform talks to start in Mexico in
September. Officials and executives say a trade deal could give
faltering economic growth a shot in the arm.

An agreement on letting very poor countries import cut-rate generic
drugs to tackle epidemics stalled late last year when the United States
effectively blocked an accord, saying proposed rules were too flexible
and could undermine firms' patents.

McKinnell said makers of copycat generics drugs were seizing on the
emotional issue to try to water down patent protection for every drug
everywhere, not just for those that poor countries with no domestic drug
industry must import to counter epidemics.

"And if you make it all countries and all drugs you have essentially
destroyed the world system of intellectual property protection. That is
the debate that's going on," he said.

"It's not about access to medicine in least developed countries. That
has been dealt with and we are perfectly willing to address that problem
in the future. The issue is that we can't accept no patents on all
drugs. That would be a disaster for the world."

Drugmakers say patents enable them to earn enough money to justify
expensive research and devlopment spending.

Under a 1994 global trade pact, countries agreed to put patent laws in
place by 2005 that covered all drugs discovered after 1995, McKinnell noted.

That means some 16,000 drugs that were in the marketplace up to 1995 are
not affected and that cut-rate generic versions are still available for
the vast majority of products.

Very few drugs patented after 1995 have been approved so far, only
around 20 to 30 a year, he added, so in all around 300 new drugs over a
decade will fall under the rules.

He insisted the debate was not about access to healthcare in poor
countries, with the exception of HIV/AIDS, for which new drugs have been
launched since 1995. But many drugmakers provide AIDS drugs for free or
at cost in the poorest lands, he noted.

"It's not about access to medicine. It's about the ability of some
companies to copy our technology, steal our technology in the future,"
he said.

World Trade Organisation Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi was also
upbeat after talks in Davos.


--
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technlogy
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:james.love@cptech.org
tel. +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040