Politics of Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medicines by Valbona Muzaka

Author:Valbona Muzaka [Muzaka, Valbona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Human Rights, Public Health - Legislation & Jurisprudence, Human Rights - Health Aspects, Pharmaceutical Policy, Government, Commerce - Legislation & Jurisprudence, Social Medicine, Industrial Property, Right to Health Care, Law, Drug Discovery - Legislation & Jurisprudence, Intellectual Property, Globalization, Political Science, Health Aspects, Economic Policy, International, Public Policy, Medical Policy, Right to Health
ISBN: 9780230235298
Google: FRQqkgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0230235298
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011-02-28T18:30:00+00:00

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Shifting IP Issues between Regimes and Fora: Contestations Continued

The previous chapters have demonstrated why and how IPRs came to be seen as a trade matter and, later, why IPRs-access to medicines contests became highly politicised in the late 1990s, how state and non-state actors with different normative and material interests participated in these contests over the years and why the latter were 'resolved' the way they were in the Hong Kong TRIPs Amendment in 2005. As we have seen, during the negotiations over the Declaration, the Decision and the Amendment, pharmaceutical business actors and key developed countries continued to consider IP protection for pharmaceuticals as a trade and competitiveness issue, while most developing countries and Campaign NGOs viewed it as a public health and public good issue, although commercial concerns were not irrelevant to developing members and even a few NGOs (such as MSF). As was argued earlier, the Doha Declaration, a victory for the developing members and civil society actors, posed serious challenges neither to the TRIPs-mandated IP standards nor to the IP-trade linkage established by it. The 2003 Decision and the subsequent 2005 Amendment, laden with procedures and requirements to protect the IP interests of pharmaceutical business, were even less successful in doing so.

But regimes are dynamic and contested processes, and contestations over a particular issue are likely to continue as actors who do not share a consensus over how it is 'resolved' may continue to challenge, redefine and reframe it time and again. And, as the last chapter showed, the 2005 Amendment represented an unsatisfactory resolution of the IPRs-access to medicines contests for many of the actors involved, largely due to its highly skewed and burdensome nature. Moreover, as was the case with the TRIPs Agreement and the Doha Declaration earlier on, it was to be expected that contests over pharmaceutical IPRs would continue

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during the implementation phase of the Amendment, a process during which rules of a more general nature become common practice and instantiate certain interpretations and understandings over others. In any case, even if both the Amendment and its implementation were balanced, the issue of compulsory licences was but one element of the more complex IP-public health debate which, as we shall see in this chapter, far from fading away, has been expanding and overflowing into other regimes and fora.

The conclusion of the TRIPs amendment process in 2005 did not, then, signal the end of the IP-public health contests - or other contests over IPRs for that matter. Indeed, having dealt exclusively with developments at the WTO in the last chapter, two arguments need further attention. Firstly, the IP-public health contests in 2001-2005 were not limited to the WTO forum. As we have seen, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs), the WHO and various human rights bodies were drawn into the IP-public health debate early on. Of these additional fora, it is the FTAs that have come to constitute a new and important front where IPRs-access to medicines contests have unfolded. Perhaps it would

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