[Ip-health] Reuters: UPDATE 3-India, Brazil to take EU to court in generics row

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSLM69715620091022?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10522

Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:00pm ED

  * India, Brazil decide on case against EU on generics

* No date for launching case

* Case triggered by Dutch seizure of blood pressure drug

* Drug was generic made in India en route for Brazil

(Adds EU comment)

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - India and Brazil will take the European
Union to court at the World Trade Organisation, diplomats said on
Thursday, raising the stakes in a bitter dispute over seizures of
generic drugs.

WTO ambassadors from the two emerging powers told Reuters their
governments had decided to request consultations with the EU in the
row, the first step in launching a formal trade dispute.

Developing countries believe the case, originally involving the
seizure by Dutch customs of a blood pressure drug en route from India
to Brazil last December, is a symbol of their mistreatment by rich
nations and corporations.

It also sums up a major dilemma in trade and intellectual property
policy -- how to reconcile the provision of affordable medicine to
people in poor countries with the need to encourage medical research
through patent protection.

"We've taken the decision to launch consultations," India's WTO
ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia told Reuters. "We're just completing the
procedural work."

"As of now the decision in Brasilia is to move forward," Brazil's WTO
ambassador Roberto Azevedo said.

The two have not yet decided when to notify the request formally to
the WTO, as they continue to prepare the case.

Sounding a conciliatory note, the European Commission said it took
access to medicines for developing countries seriously and was
examining the seizures of drugs last year.

"The Commission agrees that necessary action against counterfeit and
dangerous medicines should not be at the expense of trade in genuine
generic medicines," Lutz Guellner, spokesman for European Trade
Commissioner Catherine Ashton, told Reuters.

Ashton had discussed the question with India's Commerce and Industry
Minister Anand Sharma earlier this month and agreed to continue
working on it, he said.

"DOUBLE STANDARDS"

In a report this week, campaign groups Oxfam and Health Action
International accused Europe of double standards by cracking down on
medicine prices at home while undermining access to cheap drugs in
poor countries.

Since late 2008, Dutch and German officials have made customs seizures
totalling 19 shipments of generic medicines bound for developing
countries, Oxfam and HAI said.

Elise Ford, Oxfam head of EU advocacy, said the action would result in
higher medicine prices in developing countries, just as the European
Commission was stepping up its own campaign to ensure access to cheap
generics within EU member states.

European antitrust regulators have launched a series of raids of
pharmaceutical companies since January 2008 in a bid to uncover
potentially illegal blocks on generics, which they suspect are pushing
up costs for EU healthcare systems.

India and Brazil say last December's seizure, which has since been
repeated, is part of a pattern by rich nations to claw back special
treatment agreed for poor countries.

The EU says it has the right to inspect generic drugs in transit to
protect its citizens and people in developing countries from fake
medicines.

Last December's seizure involved a shipment of losartan, the generic
name for Merck & Co's (MRK.N) blood pressure drug Cozaar, which was
developed jointly by Merck and E I du Pont de Nemours & Co (DD.N).

The drugs had been exported by India's Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd
(REDY.BO), which flew them back to India after customs released them.

Formally, under WTO rules, India and Brazil would launch separate
complaints, although these could be consolidated into a single case.

"The legal teams are already talking to each other and getting ready,"
Azevedo said. "If there's a claim by one then the other has to make a
claim that is consistent." (Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in
London)

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


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997