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Shadlen, Kenneth C. --- "The Post-TRIPS Politics of Patents in Latin America" [2009] ELECD 528; in Haunss, Sebastian; Shadlen, C. Kenneth (eds), "Politics of Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Politics of Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Haunss, Sebastian; Shadlen, C. Kenneth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443037

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Post-TRIPS Politics of Patents in Latin America

Author(s): Shadlen, Kenneth C.

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

2. The post-TRIPS politics of patents
in Latin America
Kenneth C. Shadlen

National policies toward intellectual property (IP) underwent substantial
transformation in the 1990s, as countries adopted new systems to conform
to the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). TRIPS-style IP regimes
make patents available for more types of knowledge, grant long periods
of patent protection, and endow patent-owners with strong rights of
exclusion.
In this chapter I examine two different types of political mobilization
and pressures for change that newly-introduced, TRIPS-style regimes
became subject to by the early 21st century. Most governments have faced
pressures to modify aspects of their IP systems regarding pharmaceuti-
cal patents.1 Though the outcomes of this mobilization are not uniform
across countries, the common thread has been for governments to address
the consequences of stronger patent protection on the price of medicines
and access to drugs. At the same time, most governments have also faced
pressures to modify aspects of their patent systems more broadly related
to science, technology, and indigenous innovation. Here too we witness
cross-national variation in outcomes, but all around a common theme of
trying to strengthen local actors' capacities to take advantage of the incen-
tives of patent protection and creating new regulatory frameworks to link
publicly-funded scientific research with private industry.
These two trajectories of mobilization and change in the areas of drugs­
health and science­technology­innovation (STI) are somewhat contradic-
...