Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines
Recent free trade agreements include intellectual property provisions that extend generous patent rights to pharmaceutical companies, which can price life-saving drugs out of the reach of poor people.
Intellectual property laws are usually designed to balance the needs of an inventor or company to make money from a patented idea or product with the interests of the community to benefit from the product. Recent free trade agreements include intellectual property provisions that extend generous patent rights for pharmaceutical companies, which can price life-saving drugs out of the reach of poor people. These trade rules also limit access to low-cost generic equivalent drugs. This has severe implications for the majority of poor people in Central America, who cannot afford to pay high prices for patented drugs. If CAFTA ultimately includes intellectual property provisions similar to those contained in bilateral trade agreements recently established between the United States and Chile and Singapore, it could precipitate a public health crisis in the region.
All of the Central America countries negotiating CAFTA with the United States are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which administers the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (known as "TRIPS"). In the "Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health" of 2001, WTO members affirmed their commitment to ensure that countries would not be bound by patents during public health crises. They agreed that WTO patent provisions should be interpreted in ways that will help countries fight public health problems, and to seek ways to help the poorest countries to obtain affordable medicines.
Now, the US is backtracking on its promise by attempting to limit the use of this flexibility only to certain diseases and countries. This is partly due to pressure from powerful pharmaceutical industry lobbying. The United States is demanding more stringent protection of intellectual property that exceeds the TRIPS agreement. Negotiating partners are usually forced to accept these so-called "TRIPS-plus" provisions in exchange for access to the US market for their products.
The WTO's TRIPS agreement contains safeguards that allow countries to manufacture or import low-cost generic versions of patented drugs when faced with a public health problem. Recent bilateral free trade agreements between the US and Chile and Singapore do not include these safeguards, and public health advocates fear that CAFTA will contain similar limitations on obtaining affordable medicines.
Read more about Oxfam's campaign to make trade fair in the Americas.
Read more on intellectual property rights and TRIPS
CAFTA Fact Sheet: CAFTA & Public Health
Read Oxfam's critique of the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement