TRIPS and Public Health (Summary)-法搜-中国法律信息搜索网

　In all, there are significant areas of potential welfare-enhancing policies where the interests of all stakeholders can be respected.
　
　Part 4: Rethinking about the IPR regime
　
　The development of hi-tech especially the biotechnology has provided some opportunities for us to rethink about the current Intellectual property regime. First of all, and the most important, balance of interests as a basic principle of intellectual property protection should be remembered and applied. The internationalization of intellectual property protection has involved international law into the IPR regime. The function of such international institution is to keep the balance between competing interests, including interests of the private and the public, and of the developed countries and the developing.
　The notion of health as a human right has been affirmed in many international instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In another hand, several human rights instruments also recognized a human right to one’ own intellectual product, such as the Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition, UN resources on intellectual property are already beginning to be used by the human rights community in efforts to influence the policies of health.
　All human rights are universal indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. They should respect each other. Nevertheless, intellectual property conceptualized as a universal human right differs in fundamental ways from its treatment as an economic interest under intellectual property law. A human right approach offers an alternative vision of the purpose and requirements of intellectual property as well as a set of obligations that place intellectual property law in a wider context. This concept may have long-term impact. Though the legal status of health is still not clear enough in the WTO and no WTO organ has ever explicitly embraced the premise of an international human right to health, we do foresee the trend. And, there is no provision that IPR is regarded as human rights in the TRIPS Agreement, but also a trend. These concepts may have long-term impact.