Brazil pushes patent law to limit

By David Cronin

Date: 28/07/05

Brazil is testing the limits of patent-protection for drugs that would combat some of the world's most debilitating diseases.

The South American country, which is one of the leading exporters of cheap drugs for impoverished AIDS victims, is exploiting an agreement partly brokered by Pascal Lamy, then the European commissioner for trade.

That deal, reached at a World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, told poor countries that they could override drug patents to stimulate competition in the pharmaceutical sector and thereby provide cheaper life-saving medicines.

Armed with that right, Brazil wrung a concession earlier this month from Chicago-based multinational Abbott. The firm agreed that it would drastically reduce the price of lopinavir, an AIDS drugs it manufactures under the brand name Kaletra.

The Brazilian government had been threatening that it would exercise its rights under the Doha declaration to issue a compulsory licence to circumvent Abbott's patent for Kaletra and produce generic versions of it.

Many supporters of the pharmaceutical industry reacted with fury to Brazil's tactics. Robert Shapiro, America's undersecretary of commerce during Bill Clinton's presidency, accused it of resorting to "industrial blackmail".

But some anti-poverty campaigners feel that Brazil should have carried out its threat. They feel that relying on voluntary measures from industry to cut prices does not offer a sustainable solution to the AIDS crisis.

Along with lopinavir, two other anti-retrovirals account for more than 70% of the drugs budget of Brazil's National AIDS Programme: tenofovir (marketed by Gilead Sciences as Viread) and efavirenz (marketed by Merck as Stocrin).

Tenofovir is the most frequently prescribed anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy for people with AIDS in Europe. Some campaigners argue that supplying generic versions of it could be vital in treating AIDS in the African countries where the disease is rampant. Because it can be taken discreetly as one pill a day, it could be easier to prescribe to people in cultures where there is a taboo or stigma attached to being HIV positive than treatments where multiple combinations of tablets apply.

Khalil Elouardighi from Paris-based AIDS group ACT-UP says that the EU institutions have been too reticent on the Brazilian case. "Europe should be supporting Brazil's right to avail of the flexibility which Europe brokered at WTO level," he adds. "The whole world needs Brazil to make these generic versions and to export them."

He also wants the EU to speak out against a practice adopted by the US government of negotiating bilateral agreements, under which poor countries pledge not to undermine drug patents.

Elouardighi says that EU representatives should declare them unacceptable during meetings of the WTO's TRIPS Council - the body overseeing the 1994 trade-related intellectual property rights agreement - scheduled for September and October.

A European Commission source feels that the provisions won by Lamy give developing countries an important bargaining chip. "The Commission would expect that the availability of compulsory licences will help ensure the availability of relevant drugs at the lowest possible price but doesn't expect that many compulsory licences, if any, will actually be granted," the source explains. "If compulsory licences are available, the negotiating position of purchasers changes dramatically. Usually, the right-holder will be well-advised to supply the drugs in question himself at a low price, rather than watching a competitor doing the business with a compulsory licence."

Article reports that Brazil, one of the leading exporters of cheap drugs for impoverished AIDS victims, was testing the limits of patent-protection for drugs that would combat some of the world's most debilitating diseases.

The South American country was exploiting an agreement reached at a World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, which told poor countries that they could override drug patents to stimulate competition in the pharmaceutical sector and thereby provide cheaper life-saving medicines.