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Intellectual Property, Access to Medicines, and Health: New Research Horizons

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Abstract

In this introduction, we review the literature on intellectual property rights and access to medicines, identifying two distinct generations of research. The first generation analyzes the origins of new intellectual property rules, in particular the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and the significance of TRIPS to developing countries. The second generation examines national-level experiences, as countries adjust their laws and practices to conform to TRIPS. Based on the insights provided by the articles in the special issue, we contribute to the second generation by considering a pair of overarching sets of issues. First, we highlight the domestic political challenges that affect how countries go about implementing their new obligations under TRIPS. We argue that alliances and coalitions are necessary to underpin the use of policy instruments designed to conform to TRIPS while taking into account local conditions and needs, and we present insights that allow us to understand why alliances and coalitions are difficult to construct and sustain in this area. Second, we explain why policies that many countries adopt in response to TRIPS often do not generate their desired or intended outcomes. In the last section of the introduction, we review the articles that appear in this special issue.

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Notes

  1. http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story002/en/

  2. Patents, which are a form of IP, constitute private property rights over knowledge and inventions.

  3. Among the many works addressing these concerns, see Lanjouw (2002), Lanoszka (2003), Barton (2004), Chaudhuri (2005), Roffe et al. (2006), Coriat et al. (2006), Coriat (2008), Malbon and Lawson (2008), La Croix and Liu (2008), Aginam et al. (2013), Löfgren and Williams (2013).

  4. Countless studies have highlighted the role of transnational pharmaceutical firms in pushing for stronger patent protection. See, among others, Paine and Santoro (1992), Drahos (1995), Ryan (1998), Braithwaite and Drahos (2000), Matthews (2002), Sell (2003), Pugatch (2004), Sell (2010a), Muzaka (2011), Roemer-Mahler (2013).

  5. Among the many works that contrast the IP provisions in the WTO and regional and bilateral trade agreements, see Fink and Reichenmiller (2005), Shadlen (2005), El-Said (2005, 2007), Mercurio (2006), Morin (2006, 2009), Sell (2007, 2010b), Krikorian and Szymkowiak (2007), Deere (2008).

  6. Examination of countries’ flexibilities within the new international IP environment is consistent with—and part of—broader analyses of “policy choice” in the context of new global economic regimes (UNDP 2003; Gallagher 2013).

  7. Countries that did not grant pharmaceutical patents as of the start of TRIPS had until 2005 to do so. Countries varied in how much of this transition period they utilized.

  8. We refer here to the “Decision on the Implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health,” adopted in August 2003. For analyses of these events, see, among others, Chorev (2012), Shadlen (2004), and Abbott and Reichman (2007).

  9. In addition to the works cited in the text, many edited volumes with chapters on individual cases of IP policy-making have been published. A non-comprehensive list includes Coriat (2008), Haunss and Shadlen (2009), Shaver (2010), Shaver and Rizk (2010), Shadlen et al. (2011), Lofgren and Williams (2013), and Dreyfuss and Rodriguez-Garavito (2014).

  10. Furthermore, as discussed below, it is not clear that developing countries have underutilized TRIPS flexibilities because they have bilateral trade agreements with the USA and EU or that countries have such trade agreements because they have underutilized TRIPS flexibilities.

  11. Frischtak (1995) also points to the new trade-offs and challenges that inform IP policy-making in “open economies.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02903, USA

    Nitsan Chorev

  2. Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Kenneth C. Shadlen

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  1. Nitsan Chorev
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  2. Kenneth C. Shadlen
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Correspondence to Nitsan Chorev or Kenneth C. Shadlen.

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Chorev, N., Shadlen, K.C. Intellectual Property, Access to Medicines, and Health: New Research Horizons. St Comp Int Dev 50, 143–156 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-015-9182-6

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