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Andia, Tatiana --- "The Invisible Threat: Trade, Intellectual Property, and Pharmaceutical Regulations in Colombia" [2011] ELECD 956; in Shadlen, C. Kenneth; Guennif, Samira; Guzmán , Alenka; Lalitha, N. (eds), "Intellectual Property, Pharmaceuticals and Public Health" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Intellectual Property, Pharmaceuticals and Public Health

Editor(s): Shadlen, C. Kenneth; Guennif, Samira; Guzmán , Alenka; Lalitha, N.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800143

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The Invisible Threat: Trade, Intellectual Property, and Pharmaceutical Regulations in Colombia

Author(s): Andia, Tatiana

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

4. The invisible threat: trade,
intellectual property, and
pharmaceutical regulations in
Colombia
Tatiana Andia

As is the case in many other developing countries, since the mid-1990s
Colombia has actively pursued an ongoing transformation of intellectual
property rights (IPRs) and pharmaceutical legislation. Along with these
legislative developments, other aspects of the IPRs and pharmaceutical
sector have changed, including governmental agencies' functions and
stakeholders'­ NGOs and the local pharmaceutical industry ­ political
strategies. There are two trends that loom large as key elements of the
new pharmaceutical regulatory era in Colombia: on the one hand, the
proliferation of international free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations,
which include pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) provisions, and,
on the other hand, the recent rise of local non-IP and non-trade regulatory
reforms regarding the marketing approval of drugs and price controls,
which are meant to complement pharmaceutical IPR enforcement.
The first of these trends ­ the multiplication of FTAs negotiation ­ has
been characterized by the increased public attention accorded to health
issues and by the incessant lobbying exercised by the coalition of health
NGOs and the local pharmaceutical industry against stronger IPR pro-
tection. In turn, these two factors helped prevent the country from grant-
ing higher IPR protection standards. In contrast, the second trend ­ the
introduction of another type of pharmaceutical legislation, not trade or
IP-related1 ­ was confronted less effectively by the health NGOs and

1 Some of these measures may respond to indirect trade-related pressures, such

as those exercised in the context of ...