TRIPS and patents Archives - Oxfam Policy & Practice

Briefing paper

Trading Away Access to Medicines – Revisited: How the European trade agenda continues to undermine access to medicines

29/09/2014

1 documents

40 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

Insufficient innovation and a lack of access to affordable medicines are major barriers to achieving the right to health in low- and middle-income countries. This paper argues that European Union trade policies should not be used to bolster pharmaceutical companies’ profits by extending their monopolies on medicine prices to supposedly reward research. Instead, the incoming […]

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Book

Climate Change Liability: Transnational law and practice

03/12/2011

8 documents

710 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

As frustration mounts in some quarters at the perceived inadequacy or speed of international action on climate change and as the likelihood of significant impacts grows, the focus is increasingly turning to liability for climate change damage. Actual or potential climate change liability implicates a growing range of actors, including governments, industry, businesses, non-governmental organisations, […]

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Briefing paper

All Costs, No Benefits: How TRIPS plus intellectual property rules in the US-Jordan FTA affect access to medicines

21/03/2007

4 documents

37 pages long

Languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish

Keywords

Overview

The USA continues to impose TRIPS-plus rules on developing countries, thus preventing poor people from accessing inexpensive, generic medicines. Jordan was required under the terms of its WTO accession package and its free trade agreement (FTA) with the USA to introduce TRIPS-plus rules. Medicine prices have increased drastically, and TRIPS-plus rules were partly responsible for […]

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Briefing paper

Public Health at Risk: A US free trade agreement could threaten access to medicines in Thailand

01/04/2006

7 documents

29 pages long

Languages: English, French, Indonesian, Khmer, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese

Keywords

Overview

New stringent drug patent and marketing rules being negotiated in a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Thailand would limit competition and reduce access to affordable medicines in Thailand. This would threaten the future of existing successful Thai HIV/AIDS treatment programmes, which rely on inexpensive generic drugs, and thus deprive thousands of people […]

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Briefing paper

Robbing the Poor to Pay the Rich? How the United States keeps medicines from the world’s poorest

01/11/2003

1 documents

37 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

Impressive advances in medicine and technology have boosted health and extended life expectancy – but not for everyone. Vital new medicines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS are priced out of reach of the millions of sick people in the developing world, in part due to global patent rules which restrict the availability of affordable generic […]

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Briefing paper

US Bullying on Drug Patents: One year after Doha

01/11/2002

1 documents

18 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

One year after WTO trade ministers agreed the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, the US government, at the behest of giant pharmaceutical companies, continues to bully developing countries to introduce unnecessarily high standards of patent protection on medicines. This continued bilateral pressure restricts and delays the production of cheaper generic medicines, with potentially […]

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Research report

Beyond Philanthropy: The pharmaceutical industry, corporate social responsibility and the developing world

01/07/2002

1 documents

30 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

Every year, infectious diseases kill 14 million people worldwide. Most of these deaths are of poor people living in developing countries, particularly children under the age of five. Due to poor healthcare systems and poor infrastructure in developing countries, the sick and the dying lack adequate access to the medicines they need. Even though, the […]

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Briefing paper

TRIPS and Public Health: The next battle

01/03/2002

1 documents

19 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

The Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health agreed at the WTO Ministerial in Doha in November 2001 was an important step forward in the campaign for affordable medicines. It affirmed the primacy of public health over intellectual property rights, and the rights of governments to make full use of the public health safeguards in TRIPS. […]

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Research report

Bilateralism in Intellectual Property

04/12/2001

1 documents

18 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

This paper examines the way in which bilateral trade negotiations (Bilateral Investment Treaties and Bilateral Intellectual Property Agreements) are being used by the USA and others to build more extensive protection for intellectual property than that set out in the WTO TRIPS Agreement. It uses examples of recent US/EU negotiations with countries such as Nicaragua, […]

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Briefing paper

Priced Out of Reach: How WTO patent policies will reduce access to medicines in the developing world

01/10/2001

1 documents

19 pages long

Languages: English

Keywords

Overview

The forthcoming WTO summit offers an unparalleled opportunity to change global patent rules, known as the TRIPS agreement, so that vital medicines are not priced out of reach of people living in poverty. Unfortunately, the US government is opposing the developing-country call for TRIPS to be clarified and interpreted in favour of public health. Oxfam […]

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