Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Is Product Patent Justified In The Case of Developing Countries?

The controversy of implementation of TRIPS is far from being over. It’s a very difficult question to answer. Biggest market for medicine is in developing countries. India came into limelight as after the removal of the product patent in 1972. Indian pharmaceutical industry flourished and became a major source of low price drugs for both developing countries and developed countries. Still the accessibility to the essential drug is low in developing countries. If the implementation of the product patent does not improve the access to drugs or does not make it affordable to people in need, then why should developing countries provide such protection?

TRIPS was introduced not because the developing countries wanted it but because the MNCs and the developed countries insisted on it. MNCs argued that they were losing out their profit margin and the market as the generic producers of the developing countries were supplying the cheaper versions of their medicines by the process of reverse engineering. They also argued that there is a positive relationship between the strong patent rules and the expenditure on R&D. Initially developing countries led by India and Brazil opposed the inclusion of Intellectual Property but USA aggressively pursued and created tremendous pressure on developing countries to accept it. Hence, developing countries accepted it under the threat that otherwise developed countries would deny the advantages of having trade ties with them.

However, the benefit of TRIPS, i.e., increase in R&D does not seems to developing nations’ favour. The nature of diseases is different in developed countries and developing countries. 90% of the drugs demand is from developing countries and only 10% of R&D is done in this direction. The scenario is unlikely to change much after the product patent, but the negative impact is surely going to hamper the condition. Thus, TRIPS gave rise to conflicting debate between the developed and developing countries.

7 Comments:

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