Relaxation of TRIPs rules to aid developing world

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has agreed to launch a new, wide-ranging round of talks on liberalising global commerce – negotiations that will include the sale of pharmaceuticals.

Ministers at the summit in Doha, Qatar, also set deadlines for the new talks, which must be completed by 2005. They agreed a communique on the new round of trade in industrial goods, which said talks would try 'to reduce or as appropriate eliminate tariffs, including the reduction or elimination of tariff peaks, high tariffs, and tariff escalation, as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to developing countries.'

Meanwhile, ministers also agreed to relax restrictions under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement for least developed countries, agreeing that their governments would not have to implement commitments on patents and the protection of undisclosed information until January 2016.

The summit underlined its interpretation of the existing agreement as allowing each member 'the right to grant compulsory licences and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licences are granted', and also to 'determine what constitutes a national emergency' when these production orders might be made.

This, said a special communique, includes drugs 'relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics'. Ministers also agreed that the TRIPS Agreement allows every member country to establish its own regime on the exhaustion of intellectual property rights, so long as such rules apply equally to companies from all WTO countries.

Finally, the summit ordered the TRIPs council to develop rules that would help WTO countries deal with health emergencies, when they have no significant pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, and so cannot make effective use of compulsory licences.