Prepare for strict rules against pharmaceutical patents
Martín Bensadon and Iván Alfredo Poli examine Argentina’s recent regulation restricting patentability of many types of pharmaceutical inventions, and provide an overview of the rest of Latin America
Since the TRIPs Agreement has gradually come into force, complaints
have arisen in several developing countries that patent enforcement is
essentially incompatible with a sound public health policy. Rather than
launching an all-out attack against pharmaceutical patents, this group
espoused the view that patents were being granted for innovations that
were not really patentable, and that TRIPs allowed flexibilities to
raise the threshold for granting patents, conversely lowering the level
of protection afforded to these inventions.
This position was reflected in a statement issued in the meeting of
health ministers of the Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay
and Uruguay) held in Montevideo, Uruguay on December 4 2009, which
expressed the member countries' concern with "the proliferation of
patent applications for matters which are not properly an invention or
are marginal developments". This statement also pointed out that "the
importance and difficulties caused by pharmaceutical patents has been
acknowledged and developed...
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