[Ip-health] US exempts Canada p6 law from NAFTA rules

[James Love]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5695721

U.S., Canada Agree to Exempt AIDS Law from NAFTA
Fri Jul 16, 2004 06:02 PM ET

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The United States and Canada announced an
agreement on Friday to make clear that Ottawa's new AIDS medicine
legislation does not run afoul of North American Free Trade Agreement rules.

"I'm pleased that we've reached agreement to clarify that NAFTA's
provisions will not stand in the way of Canada's implementation of its
new law on pharmaceuticals," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick
said in a statement.

Ottawa earlier this year presented legislative amendments to make it
easier for makers of generic drugs to sell low-cost AIDS medicines to
poor countries.

The decision, taken at a NAFTA trade ministers meeting in San Antonio,
Texas, comes on the heels of the week-long 15th International AIDS
Conference in Bangkok. There, South Africa's Nelson Mandela urged the
world's rich countries to make good on financial promises to the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, launched in 2002.

The fund, the brainchild of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to present a
global, unified force against HIV and AIDS, needs more than $3 billion
for 2005.

Canada's legislative amendments, expected to take effect this year, are
designed to get drugs to people in least-developed countries, while not
undercutting the market for those medicines in richer countries.

Under the amendments, brand-name pharmaceutical companies -- the ones
holding the drug patents -- will no longer be able to step in to take
over contracts that generic companies sign with poor countries for
lower-cost versions of the drugs.

Zoellick insisted that U.S. free trade agreements are in accord with
World Trade Organization decisions reached in 2001 and 2003 aimed at
ensuring that poor countries have access to cheap versions of
life-saving drugs.