Shifting IP Issues between Regimes and Fora: Contestations Continued

Abstract

The previous chapters have demonstrated why and how IPRs came to be seen as a trade matter and, later, why IPRs-access to medicines contests became highly politicised in the late 1990s, how state and non-state actors with different normative and material interests participated in these contests over the years and why the latter were ‘resolved’ the way they were in the Hong Kong TRIPs Amendment in 2005. As we have seen, during the negotiations over the Declaration, the Decision and the Amendment, pharmaceutical business actors and key developed countries continued to consider IP protection for pharmaceuticals as a trade and competitiveness issue, while most developing countries and Campaign NGOs viewed it as a public health and public good issue, although commercial concerns were not irrelevant to developing members and even a few NGOs (such as MSF). As was argued earlier, the Doha Declaration, a victory for the developing members and civil society actors, posed serious challenges neither to the TRIPs-mandated IP standards nor to the IP–trade linkage established by it. The 2003 Decision and the subsequent 2005 Amendment, laden with procedures and requirements to protect the IP interests of pharmaceutical business, were even less successful in doing so.