TRIPS Plus Agreements and Issues in Access to Medicines in Developing Countries

Harmonization of intellectual property rights among WTO members in the recent years has seen debates on access to medicines. Though flexibilities exist in the WTO Agreement to safeguard public health priorities, such as, parallel imports, compulsory licensing, yet the capacity to utilize these flexibilities depends on various factors including country's developmental status and capacity of the industry in these countries. However, in the recent past, USA has been signing regional and bilateral trade agreements with developing countries. While developing countries are lured to such agreements because of the opening up of trade and trade concessions, however, conditions of such trade especially those binding the intellectual property rights of the goods concerning USA are stricter and broader and thereby become more powerful than the WTO Agreement governing the countries. Particularly, concerns have been raised about patentability criteria, data exclusivity with potential to extend monopoly status of the newly introduced drugs and delay the entry of generic drugs, which would obviously keep the prices beyond the reach of developing countries thereby making access to drugs difficult. A few of these aspects are discussed in this paper.