TRIPS and Public Health (Summary)
吕炳斌
【全文】
TRIPS and Public Health (Summary)
By Lu Bingbin
Abstract: Public health crisis is not a problem only within the Third World, and should be regarded as a global affair. This article explores the topic on health and WTO, mostly focusing on the legal tension between granting patent protection under the TRIPS Agreements and the availability of medicines to developing countries at affordable prices. This article discusses the recent development in the Doha Declarations, and examines what Post-TRIPS measures can be exerted in order to maintain the integrity of intellectual property rights and on the same time respecting humanitarian concerns over access to life-saving drugs. Finally, it thinks over again on some essential issues about the IPR regime.
Key Words: WTO, Public Health, Intellectual Property, TRIPS, Doha Declarations
Full text was published at IP STUDIES, Sponsored by China Academy of Social Science, 2003, China Fangzheng Press. The author wishes to thank Qianyi Li for his useful comment on an earlier version.
Part 1: WTO, International Trade and the Public Health
Public health crisis is not a problem only within the Third World, but should be regarded as a global affair. There are certainly some conflicts between the WTO regime especially the protection of International Intellectual Property under TRIPS Agreement and the promotion of public health. WTO treats health policies in several contexts—GATT Art. XX (b) (permitting health regulation that restricts trade), the SPA Agreement (governing food safety regulation), and the TRIPS Agreement (limiting manufacture and sales of patent-protected medicines). The WTO’ framers paid little heed to the public health, but the WTO system has come to treat protection of health as a de facto interpretive principle when disputes arise over members’ treat obligations. Protection of health as an interpretive principle is in no where stated in WTO associated treaties, declarations, or jurisprudence, nor is health even mentioned as a purpose in the preambles to the major WTO agreements. But politics and the public health crisis such as the AIDS pandemic have pushed health to center stage as a trade issue. Recently there are some developments with in the WTO that have affirmed member states’ power to promote health.
