The Philadelphia Inquirer
U.S. trade officials have dropped a controversial World Trade Organization case against Brazil over the use of generic copies of patented medicines that had concerned many of the world's large pharmaceutical companies.
Brazil's use of generic medicines is a key part of its national strategy that has kept AIDS in check. AIDS activists point to Brazil as a model for African nations struggling against the pandemic that has infected 36 million people worldwide.
The United States said yesterday that, instead of pursuing its complaints through the WTO, the global body for trade disputes, it would hash out the dispute directly with Brazil. Brazil has agreed to notify U.S. patent-holders if it intends to use generic copies.
The U.S. action takes the spotlight off a case that had become a symbol for activists who argued that the United States was trying to safeguard the pharmaceutical industry's patent-protected profits over the lives of the world's poor.
The announcement by the U.S. trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick, came on the opening day of an unprecedented special session of the U.N. General Assembly to address the AIDS crisis.
"I think this is a tremendous victory for the Brazilian people and for people with AIDS worldwide," said Paul Davis, a spokesman for the Health Gap Coalition, a Philadelphia advocacy group for people with AIDS.
The pharmaceutical industry also voiced approval of the announcement.
"We certainly like the fact that the U.S. and Brazilian governments are going to be talking about this and hope that by doing it this way, in a bilateral process, that it can actually get resolved more quickly," said Nancy J. Pekarek, a spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest manufacturer of AIDS medications.
She said the WTO case was meant to address patent issues for all categories of drugs, not just AIDS. But it became politically charged this winter as the debate escalated over providing generic drugs to AIDS patients in Africa.
"I think it got closely associated with HIV/AIDS," said Pekarek, "when it was actually a broader trade issue."
The U.S. trade representative stressed that the case never challenged Brazil's right to use a provision of its patent law that allows the generic production of patented drugs in the case of a national health emergency. A similar provision is part of the WTO's intellectual property rules.
Instead, the United States said it objected to another provision of Brazil's trade law that allows patented medicines to be copied if the company has not started manufacturing the drug in Brazil within three years of receiving the patent.
Davis, however, said other countries had similar local manufacturing policies, or no patent laws at all. He said U.S. officials were trying to punish Brazil for its generic strategy.
"They could have gone after any number of other countries if they wanted to explore this gray area," Davis said, "but they went after Brazil."
The decision does not mean Brazil can export generic copies of medicines, he said.
However, the use of generic copies of life-saving medicines was debated last week at a special WTO session in Geneva. Davis said the issue would come up this fall before the WTO.
"The effective protection of all American intellectual property, including that of pharmaceuticals, is an essential U.S. trade interest," the U.S. trade representative said in a statement. "Protection of these property interests is important to spur additional research and development of new pharmaceuticals that offer major opportunities to combat disease and ease human suffering."