The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7249 p673
17 May 2003

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Developing countries should be allowed to override drug patents

Support for a recommendation that developing countries should be allowed to make cut-price copies of patented medicines has been given by the Government.

The Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and for International Development, Patricia Hewitt and Clare Short (before she resigned this week), agreed with the findings of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights that intellectual property rights (IPR) regimens can, and should, be tailored to take into account the individual circumstances of developing countries.

The CIPR said that patents systems can help to establish differential pricing mechanisms, which would allow prices for drugs to be lower in developing countries, while higher prices are maintained in developed countries. It added the caveat: “If differential pricing is to work, then it is necessary to stop low priced drugs leaking back to developed countries. Developed countries should maintain and strengthen their legislative regimens to prevent imports of low priced pharmaceutical products originating from developing countries and to help maintain the price differential. However, developing countries should aim to facilitate in their legislation their ability to import patented medicines if they can get them cheaper elsewhere in the world.”

The commission also recommended that developing countries should establish workable laws and procedures to allow for the compulsory licensing of patented products.

An Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry spokesman, Richard Ley, said that the ABPI had always recognised the right of developing countries to over-ride patents in certain circumstances, such as national epidemics.

On the issue of whether the prices of patented medicine were too high for developing countries he said: “It isn’t reasonable to suggest that patents are the barrier to the effective provision of medicines.” National infrastructure and health care systems were often the obstacle.

Mr Ley pointed out that about 95 per cent of medicines included in the World Health Organization’s essential drug list were out of patent and that it was patents that enabled pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines.