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Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy ** Integrated Policy Exercise ** January 2003

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Patent laws are keeping poor countries in poverty

BMJ 2002;325:562 ( 14 September )

Zosia Kmietowicz, London

Intellectual property systems in developed countries are helping to keep poorer countries trapped in poverty, says a report out this week. Laws on patents and intellectual property need to be relaxed and adapted to help developing countries fight poverty and gain access to technology, medicines, and research.

Developing countries should set their own agenda and develop laws that give them easier access to cut-price drugs and generic versions of drugs that are still patented. They should also aim to ensure that diagnostic and surgical methods are excluded from patents, says the report from the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights.

The commission, which was set up by the British government in May 2001 to see how poor people could benefit from national rules on intellectual property, also suggests that companies that share their technology with poorer countries should be rewarded in some way, perhaps with tax breaks.

"Intellectual property systems may, if not used carefully, introduce distortions that are detrimental to the interests of developing countries. Developed countries should pay more attention to reconciling their

commercial self-interest with the need to reduce poverty in developing countries, which is in everyone's interest," says the report.

In a foreword to the report, Hugh Laddie, UK High Court Patents Judge, says

that TRIPS (trade related aspects of intellectual property) which allows members of the World Trade Organization to have easier access to cheaper medicines "has not resulted in a shrinking of the gap that divides those two sides [the developed world and the developing world], rather it has helped to reinforce the views already held." There are those, mainly in the developed world, who believe that intellectual property rights are good and must be strengthened, whereas developing countries believe they benefit just the developed world and seriously damage industry and technology everywhere else.

The principles laid out in TRIPS need to be made more flexible, and the deadline to adopt the treaty should be extended to 2016 for some countries, says the report.

"Developed countries often proceed on the assumption that what is good for them is likely to be good for developing countries," said Professor John Barton, chairman of the commission, and professor of law, Stanford University.

"But, in the case of developing countries, more and stronger protection is not necessarily better. Developing countries should not be encouraged or coerced into adopting stronger IP [intellectual property] rights without regard to the impact this has on their development and poor people. They should be allowed to adopt appropriate rights regimes, not necessarily the most protective ones."

Footnotes

The full text of the report and the executive summary is on the website of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights (www.iprcommission.org)