Patients Before Profits: TRIPS and Trade Rules on Intellectual Property

Oxfam's campaign to push the World Trade Organization to put people before profits.

Every year, millions of impoverished people around the world die of preventable diseases simply because they cannot afford to buy the medicines they need to survive. This is one of the most tragic outcomes of the international trade rules that govern intellectual property–they put the price of life-saving drugs out of the reach of patients in poor countries. Patent rules protect pharmaceutical companies that develop new drugs, by allowing these companies to charge high prices and making it difficult for governments to produce cheaper, generic alternatives.

By: Toby Adamson/Oxfam

The granting of patent protection for medication and agricultural products is an important issue for developing countries. These countries argue that World Trade Organization rules on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (known as TRIPS) should allow poor countries to obtain generic versions of patented drugs to address public health problems such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Rich countries promised to provide poor countries with access to affordable drugs at World Trade Organization meetings in Doha, Qatar in 2001. But the US representatives to the WTO are attempting to renegotiate them, with grave consequences for public health in poor countries.

Since 2001, Oxfam has engaged in a campaign to revise the global patent rules of the World Trade Organization so that they favor public health over companies' patent rights. Oxfam has been pressuring drug companies to help poor people access critical medicines—to put patients before profits.

Intellectual Property, TRIPS, and Access to Medicines: The Basics of How Trade Rules Affect People's Right to Health Care

What is Intellectual Property, what does it have to do with access to affordable medicines in developing countries, why is this an issue of international trade, and what is Oxfam's position on these important issues?

Learn the answers to these questions—and others:

Intellectual Property Basics

Global Health Crisis

The WTO Trips Agreement: International Trade Rules on Intellectual Property

TRIPS and Medicines

The Doha Declaration

What is Oxfam's position on TRIPS?

"TRIPS-Plus" Provisions

Find out more about Oxfam’s work on TRIPS:

Access to Medicines: AIDS and Africa

Congressional Testimony: Oxfam America Senior Policy Advisor's remarks to House Subcommittee on Trade

Singapore Trade Agreement: Oxfam Letter to Congress Opposes Provisions on Patent Protections