[Pharm-policy] US-Jordan FTA and the threat to compulsory licensing

[Robert Weissman]

Two days ago, the United States and Jordan finalized a Free Trade
Agreement between the two countries. The agreement -- posted in pdf
format at www.ustr.gov -- includes intellectual property protections
that appear to limit the scope of compulsory licensing beyond
limitations contained in the WTO TRIPS agreement.

The US-Jordan deal specifies only three situations in which compulsory
licensing is permitted:

- to remedy anticompetitive problems
- for governmental, non-commercial use, or in the case of emergency when

the licensee is either a governmental agency or a governmental designee
- for non-working, with importation meeting requirements to work the
patent

There is also language on test data exclusivity that seems very
restrictive.

If I'm reading this right, the FTA eliminates the standard compulsory
licensing permitted in the TRIPS. Since each of these agreements sets
the bar for the next, this may be very serious -- especially when one
takes into account the extremely restrictive intepretation of
"emergency" that US officials have bandied about.