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Matthews, Duncan --- "Lessons from Negotiating an Amendment to the TRIPs Agreement: Compulsory Licensing and Access to Medicines" [2007] ELECD 281; in Westkamp, Guido (ed), "Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Westkamp, Guido

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427757

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Lessons from Negotiating an Amendment to the TRIPs Agreement: Compulsory Licensing and Access to Medicines

Author(s): Matthews, Duncan

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

12. Lessons from negotiating an
amendment to the TRIPS Agreement:
Compulsory licensing and access to
medicines
Duncan Matthews*

INTRODUCTION
The announcement, on 6 December 2005, that the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) Members had reached agreement on a permanent amendment to the
Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the
TRIPS Agreement) to allow WTO Members to issue compulsory licences to
export generic versions of patented medicines to countries with insufficient or
no manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector, marked the latest
phase in a long process of negotiations on access to medicines that began with
the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health of 14
November 20011 and also included the 30 August 2003 WTO Decision on the
Implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS
Agreement and Public Health.2 The agreement of 6 December 2005 on the



* Reader, Intellectual Property Research Institute, Centre for Commercial Law
Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. Sections of this chapter draw on the
following articles by the author: Matthews, D. (2004) `WTO Decision on
Implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and
Public Health: A Solution to the Access to Essential Medicines Problem?', Journal of
International Economic Law, 7(1): 73-106; Matthews, D. (2006) `From the 30 August
2003 WTO Decision to the 6 December 2005 Agreement on an Amendment to TRIPS:
Improving Access to Medicines in Developing Countries?', Intellectual Property
Quarterly, 2: 91­130.
1 Declaration on the ...