Description
Title: Patent Rights, the Right to Health, and the WTO’s Dispute Settlement SystemAbstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of not just facilitating access to affordable medicines but also the significance of fostering the local production of essential medicines (and vaccines). It is now becoming increasingly clear to a number of countries that they need to take steps to ensure that they can locally produce medicines and vaccines instead of relying on the importation of such products.
At the same time, several states (including WTO members) are parties to treaties such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which requires them to respect, protect, and fulfil the right to health. Thus, it could be argued that the adoption of measures aimed at improving access to affordable medicines and facilitating the local production of medicines and vaccines is part of the right to health responsibilities of states. For instance, measures such as the exclusion of new forms of known drugs from patent protection (to improve access to medicines by preventing the ‘ever-greening’ of patent rights) and local working requirements (to encourage the local production of medicines or vaccines) are some measures that states could implement in this regard. Nevertheless, it is possible that if such measures are implemented by states, they might be perceived as controversial and equally challenged as being incompatible with WTO obligations such as the TRIPS Agreement. It is therefore worth exploring whether the right to health could be used to justify such measures if challenged before a WTO dispute settlement panel.
Against this backdrop, and with a specific focus on the TRIPS Agreement, this paper therefore seeks to answer the following key question i.e.: to what extent can a WTO member rely on its right to health obligations to justify the implementation of measures relating to patent rights that are designed to improve access to medicines and the local production of medicines or vaccines? This paper will critically address this question by drawing on the following WTO disputes: Brazil – Patent Protection; EU – Seizure of Generic Drugs in Transit; Australia – Tobacco Plain Packaging; and Turkey – Pharmaceutical Products.
| Period | 29 Oct 2022 → 30 Oct 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Workshop on ‘A Human-Centered Approach to Health Innovations: Reconciling Intellectual Property with Human Rights’, organised by the Global Justice Program at Yale University and the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University |
| Event type | Workshop |
| Location | United StatesShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |