A recent report commissioned by the Government into intellectual property acknowledges the problems with TRIPS and access to medicines. Importantly, the report puts pressure on the Government to officially recognise the difficulties that developing countries face in attempting to implement the flexibilities of the TRIPS agreement. This gives further weight and momentum to the Stop AIDS Campaign.

Key recommendations from the report include:
Recommendation 5: UKPO should undertake joint working with African patent offices from mid-2007, with the aim of:

• helping them to take advantage of the flexibilities currently existing in the WTO/TRIPS architecture where appropriate; and
• encouraging them to make positive use of IP rights through dissemination of information in patents.

Recommendation 7: Government should encourage WTO members to ratify the amendments to TRIPS to make importation of drugs easier and cheaper.

The whole report can be found in pdf form at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_index.cfm

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Campaign News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.