Amidst TRIPS and public health: cooperation among developing countries in the 2001 TRIPS Council negotiations on access to medicines

• Grant number: 11/19340-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Luis Antonio Paulino
• Grantee: João Paulo Hernandes Teodoro
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

During the 90s many developing countries, notably the sub-Saharan, faced an AIDS epidemic and had been encountering problems towards medicine access to the disease. These countries, due the high costs of patented medicines, had to choose between public health assistance and strict respect to intellectual property rights, this last severely advocated by a group of developed countries. In such context, some developing countries sought to negotiate on WTO TRIPS Council in 2001, aiming to reach legal guarantee on the use of the TRIPS Agreement flexibilities, specifically the legal right to parallel import and the possibility of conceding compulsory licenses to patents in case of national emergency or threat to public health. This project aims to perform a bibliographic review about such negotiations, that took place between June and November 2001, paying attention to the role of cooperation among developing countries to the result favorable to them, embodied in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health.