DEVELOPMENT: Intellectual Property Rights Damage Poor Countries

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep 12 2002 (IPS) - Expansion of Intellectual Property Rights is working against poverty reduction in developing countries, according to a major new study.

A 180-page report presented to the British government Thursday by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights called on developed nations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to take the circumstances of poor countries and their development needs into account when seeking to develop international intellectual protection (IP) systems.

The commission was set up on the initiative of the British government following a recommendation in a policy paper on globalisation and development published at the end of 2000. Its members were drawn from both developed and developing countries with expertise in science, law, ethics and economics.

The report titled ‘Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy’ follows extensive research that included more than a dozen meetings and workshops, 17 working papers, an exhaustive literature review of the field, visits to several developed and developing countries and a major conference.

The report makes some 50 recommendations on introducing IP protection that does not work against reducing poverty in developing nations. The recommendations cover IP issues related to health, agriculture, traditional knowledge, copyrights, software and the Internet, and the role of WTO and WIPO. The commission report says the present system increases the costs of access to many products and technologies that developing countries need.

“Developed countries often proceed on the assumption that what is good for them is likely to be good for developing countries,” said Professor John Barton, Commission Chair and Professor of Law at Stanford University.

“But in the case of developing countries more and stronger protection is not necessarily better. Developing countries should not be encouraged or coerced into adopting stronger IP rights without regard to the impact this has on their development and poor people. They should be allowed to adopt appropriate rights regimes, not necessarily the most protective ones.”

Developing countries participate in global intellectual property systems as “second comers” in a world that has been shaped by “first comers”, said Barton. “They are now being urged to adopt a complex set of rules more suited to advanced economies. “When their economies were at comparable stages of maturity, most developed countries did not follow the stringent intellectual property standards they now advocate for developing countries.”

The commission makes the following recommendations in specific areas:

– Access to Medicines: The commission report says that without the incentive of patents, it is doubtful the private sector would have invested so much in the discovery and development of medicines, many of which benefit both developed and developing countries.

But the report finds that the IP system “hardly plays any role in stimulating research on diseases particularly prevalent in developing countries” unless there is also a substantial market in the developed world. The cost of medicines in developing countries is likely to increase unless steps are taken to counteract this trend, according to the report.

The report recommends use of differential pricing which would allow prices for drugs to be lower in developing countries. They must then ensure that these lower price drugs do not “leak back to developed countries.”

Developing countries should also make provisions in their law that will facilitate entry of generic competitors as soon as the patent has expired on a particular drug, says the report.

– Patents on Plants and Traditional Knowledge: The report discourages developing countries from providing patent protection for plants and animals, as is allowed under TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), because of the restrictions patents may place on use of seeds by farmers and researchers. It recommends developed countries respond constructively to the concerns of developing countries about the patenting of their genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge.

Patent applicants should be required to disclose the geographic source of the genetic material from which their “invention” is derived, the report says. In this way, developing countries can be informed of proposed patents that incorporate their resources and take action if their rights have been overlooked.

The report urges other reforms as well to make it harder for commercial interests to claim rights on what is already known in developing countries (such as knowledge of the medicinal value of a native plant).

– WTO, WIPO: The Commission called on the WTO and WIPO to take into account the needs and interests of those adversely affected by IP rights, not just the interests of potential beneficiaries of those rights.

“This applies to the evolution of policy with respect to the digital media and the Internet,” said Barton. “The temptation to impose very strict protection because of the ease with which software and other digital media can be copied may diminish the very real benefits they could bring to developing countries, particularly in accessing educational and scientific documents at low cost.”

While making these recommendations the commission cautions also that changes to IP laws alone will not deliver results to developing countries. “IP rights are only one factor among many in the development process,” said Gill Samuels, member of the commission and senior director of science policy and scientific affairs for Europe at Pfizer Ltd. in UK.

“Even the complete absence of IP rights would not solve the lack of sufficient resources for adequate health facilities, health workers and medicines for all in developing nations.”

The commissioners who led the study were Prof John Barton (Chair), Daniel Alexander, barrister specialising in Intellectual Property Law in London, Prof Carlos Correa, director, masters programme on science and technology policy and management at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, Dr. Ramesh Mashelkar, director-general, Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, in India, Dr. Gill Samuels and Dr. Sandy Thomas, director of Nuffield Council on Bioethics in London.