SciDev.Net

This book, published by the intergovernmental organisation South Centre, presents a collection of articles on intellectual property (IP) restrictions and access to knowledge for developing countries.

An outcome of the South Centre Innovation and Access to Knowledge Programme, the book responds to pressure from IP owners to increase control over knowledge in different forms including digital platforms. 

This discussion paper from the South Centre and Center for International Environmental Law, discusses the international transfer of environmentally sound technologies within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The authors present an overview of the UNFCCC's structure for negotiation, including the legal frameworks. They review the history of the technology transfer debate from the inception of the UNFCCC to the post-Poznan landscape and discuss relevant intellectual property agreements including the World Intellectual Property Organization.

They conclude that the expert group on technology transfer will continue to influence how technology transfer is treated within the UNFCCC and call on industrialised countries to recognise the real need for technology transfer and funds from developing countries, rather than using technology transfer as a political tool to bargain for binding mitigation targets.

This paper challenges the idea that patent counts provide reliable indicators of innovation in cross-country assessments. The authors argue that national differences in patent systems — how and why patents are granted and standards of examination — make comparisons across countries difficult at best, inaccurate at worst.

They urge readers to be cautious in interpreting the World Intellectual Property Organization findings that suggest the geography of innovation is changing — based on a sharp rise in patent counts in north-east Asia. The authors' own analysis of Chinese patent applications and legal frameworks in Brazil, India, Europe and the United States shows wide differences in the value of patents across regions.

They recommend developing a proper set of indicators for monitoring innovation capacities, particularly in developing countries.

This series of commentaries and papers, published by The Lancet, examines the challenges to achieving a balance between trade and health.

It includes analyses of the WHO and World Trade Organisation (WTO), arguing that they facilitate trade before the health of poor people. Other authors explore issues such as global trade governance, intellectual property rights on life-saving drugs, and how trade practices adversely affect diet and exploit workers.

Richard Smith, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues outline an agenda for action to strengthen the evidence on trade and health links, build capacity within health on trade issues and assert health goals in trade policy. They make specific recommendations for the WHO and WTO, donors, governments, nongovernment organisations and academics.

This report, published by Centre d'Économie Industrielle (CERNA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), examines the distribution of climate mitigation inventions since 1973 and their international transfer.

Based on an analysis of patent data, the authors find that innovations are mostly made — and exchanged between — developed countries, although China and South Korea are found among the top ten inventors. Only 18 per cent of climate mitigation technology exports come from emerging economies, but this proportion is growing rapidly and offers huge potential for North–South and South–South exchanges.

Technologies considered in the report include wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy, energy conservation in buildings, motor vehicle fuel injection, and carbon capture and storage.

The authors use graphs and tables to present their results. Their findings suggest that the Kyoto protocol has induced innovation but has had no effect on technology transfer.

This report, published by E3G and Chatham House proposes an institutional framework for the innovation and transfer of low carbon and adaptation technologies, and suggests key features for the international agreement due to be signed at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The authors include an executive summary and an analysis of key issues including technology options, capacity in developing countries and intellectual property rights (IPR).

They also make recommendations for action, calling for objectives to be set in terms of critical technologies that need developing. Other suggestions include creating a multilateral innovation and diffusion fund, using sectoral approaches to accelerate technology development and deployment, and establishing a 'protect and share' agreement for IPR.

This article examines the US Bayh–Dole (BD) Act — a 1980s measure that sought to stimulate science-based economic growth by encouraging universities to patent inventions resulting from government-funded research — and assesses its suitability for developing countries.

The authors look at how and why advocates of BD-type initiatives sometimes overstate its impact in the United States and discuss the problems the act has caused for American biotechnology and information technology.

They outline the policy options for developing countries seeking to improve the contributions universities make to economic development and provide a list of safeguards that should be put in place before adopting laws styled after the act. These include no exclusive licensing, transparent patenting and government authority to issue additional licenses.

The authors conclude that policies to develop public sector research and development are context-specific and it is unclear whether any of the positive impacts of BD in the United States would arise in developing countries following similar legislation.

In this paper, World Bank researcher Michael Finger summarises a collection of case studies from his book of the same title (Helping poor people to earn from their knowledge, Oxford University Press 2003). The case studies are built on examples of how poor people in developing countries use skills, innovation and creativity to earn a living from traditional crafts and traditional technologies.

Finger says that an important aim of the book is to draw attention to the income-generating potential of traditional knowledge for poor communities. He says policymakers (in both developed and developing countries) seem preoccupied with legal issues regarding traditional knowledge — such as defending traditional knowledge from being misappropriated by industrial interests; or policing biopiracy — when they ought to be also thinking about finding ways to help poor communities develop the commercial potential of traditional knowledge.

In this paper - which is targeted at national-level policy makers - the author explores the complex issue of traditional knowledge protection, and deems its protection to be necessary on utilitarian grounds.

The author argues that attempts to define traditional knowledge (TK) should focus on demarcating the nature of contribution that such knowledge could have to industrial research and development. The emphasis on the nature of the information itself serves as the best parameter of what the limits of "community/communities" are, and what sort of knowledge ought to be protected and made contractible through an intellectual property right.

The most effective options to protect traditional medicinal knowledge - the focus of the paper -  appear to be those of trade secrecy or a system of community intellectual property rights. Categories of TK that do not fall within such criteria could be documented into databases to prevent third parties from claiming patents on already existing knowledge.

But a well defined right is only the first step in empowering communities. A large onus rests on the design of institutions that will put this right into an enforceable framework. These institutions would have two tasks: to represent communities effectively and to provide rules of contract formation that take into account the difficulties of dealing with information as a resource. The author acknowledges that the effective operation of such institutions may not be at all easy to achieve.

Realising that traditional knowledge holders stand outside the fold of intellectual property rights and are most often negatively affected by them, the AAAS has created a handbook that attempts to make intellectual property issues and protection options more understandable and readily available for traditional knowledge holders, human rights organisations, and legal professionals.

Its ultimate goal is to help communities understand and identify potential protection mechanisms already present in the current intellectual property rights regime that may be applied to their knowledge.

For communities that do not wish to participate in the IP regime, it offers suggestions and options to avoid inappropriate claims on their knowledge by others.

As well as providing the full text of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, the WTO website also offers:

• a basic introduction to the agreement
• a more detailed overview
• a list of frequently asked questions about TRIPS
• a factsheet on TRIPS and pharmaceuticals

This report was produced by the Policy Department of Oxfam (Great Britain) as part of its ‘Cut the Cost of Medicines’ Campaign. Oxfam argues that governments must amend global patent rules to ensure that impoverished people have access to the medicines at prices they can afford.

The report gives an overview of the WTO patent rules and Oxfam’s concerns; describes the health crisis in developing countries; examines the effect of patents both on the price of medicines and on pharmaceutical research and development; explores the issue of biopiracy; looks at what action governments and private companies might take; and considers the politics of patent rules.

The report’s recommendations focus on TRIPS reform and on the need for rich countries and trans-national companies to "stop harassing developing countries on patent issues". They also cover the need for public funding for research into new medicines, and the role that industry could play in making medicines affordable.

(Various briefing notes, position statements and research papers are also available from this website.)

This report argues that agricultural research and development is at a crossroads — one path leads to the privatisation of agriculture and the other towards farmer-led agriculture.

It claims that intellectual property rights (IPR) are incompatible with sustainable agriculture, and warns that sui generis systems designed to boost domestic public research cannot simultaneously attract foreign private sector investment.

The report urges Asian governments to address the inherent threats of IPR over genetic resources, to take a look at other options that would better serve the interests of their people, and to start implementing a truly pro-people agricultural research and development agenda.

This is an in-depth report that intends to assist developing countries in their efforts to adapt their laws to the standards set by TRIPS in relation to pharmaceutical products and processes.

The author presents options for the design and implementation of public-health-sensitive patent policies in developing countries. It examines approaches to selected issues in patent law that may help to strike a balance between the public and private interests involved in the protection of health-related inventions, including those of States, patients, and of the suppliers of health-related goods and services.

The report was prepared as part of an initiative that explored health-related aspects of intellectual property rights and how to further the needs of the poor and excluded in developing countries. It is primarily addressed to policy makers and others involved in public health in developing countries.

"Fatal imbalance" is the product of MSF’s 'Drugs for Neglected Diseases' Working Group — a collaboration between scientists, health professionals, drug development experts, international organisations and non-governmental organisations.

It concludes that virtually no new drugs are being developed for diseases that predominantly affect the poor, such as sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis. For example, of the 1393 new drugs approved between 1975 and 1999, just 13 (one per cent) were for tropical diseases.

The report explains that responsibility for correcting the 'fatal imbalance' lies with governments, who must become directly and proactively involved in searching for solutions at a global level. The report also recommends that capacity building and technology transfer projects to increase research and development expertise in developing countries be actively pursued.

The Commission on Intellectual Property Rights is an independent international body that was set up by the British government in 2001 to examine how intellectual property (IP) rights could work better for developing countries. The Commission’s fundamental task was to consider whether the rules and institutions of IP protection as they have evolved to date can contribute to development and the reduction of poverty in developing countries. As the title of their report implies, the Commission concludes that development objectives need to be integrated into policy-making on intellectual property rights, both nationally and internationally, and the report sets out ways in which this could be put into practice.

The Commission's work has considered:

• how national IPR regimes could best be designed to benefit developing countries within the context of international agreements, including TRIPS;
• how the international framework of rules and agreements might be improved and developed — for instance in the area of traditional knowledge — and the relationship between IPR rules and regimes covering access to genetic resources;
• the broader policy framework needed to complement intellectual property regimes including for instance controlling anti-competitive practices through competition policy and law.

The final report has chapters and recommendations on: intellectual property and development; health; agriculture and genetic resources; traditional knowledge, access and benefit sharing and geographical indications; copyright, software and the Internet; patent reform; institutional capacity; and the international architecture.

[The report is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.]

This is an introductory overview of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement aimed at policy-makers and technical personnel in developing countries. It highlights some of the central issues for the South and gives recommendations to those formulating policy and legislation in this field.

In particular, the document suggests that maximum advantage must be taken of those areas where the agreement leaves some scope for choice in determining national legislation, in order to ensure that this is formulated in a manner that helps countries to achieve their development objectives. In addition, it is suggested that there are a number of areas in which developing countries could co-operate to great mutual advantage.

The document is based on a draft by Carlos Correa and colleagues at the Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This background paper describes the basic principles behind two strategies that could be used to bring down the price of drug therapies: parallel importing (bringing drugs from another country) and compulsory licensing (restricting the monopoly rights of existing patent holders to permit generic drug production).

Other means of lowering drug prices are also briefly discussed. The paper aims to provide people with sufficient information to participate fully in the debate surrounding international trade laws and access to essential drugs (especially HIV-related medications).

The report is also available in French and Spanish.

This paper — based on a talk McDonald (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom) gave at QUNO — considers the costs and benefits of the patent system. The paper gives examples showing that the costs would seem to be considerable and their distribution as uneven as that of the benefits.

Staring out with a 'conventional' view of patents, the author then considers the use of patents in practice. He warns that the patent system is ripe for abuse, and that such exploitation is deliberately hidden from those who bear its costs. The author concludes that the greatest cost to society is that the patent system is, in fact, 'anti-innovative'.

This is a readable and personal account of the rationale, history and shortcomings of the patent system.

This background briefing sets out in plain language the development aspects of intellectual property rules, from the UK government’s perspective. It describes the controversies surrounding intellectual property, lists the potential costs and benefits, outlines research into the 'appropriate level' of intellectual property rules, and discusses issues surrounding TRIPS (in particular access to medicines and biodiversity). The paper emphasises the need to maintain the flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement, which the government believes allow all countries — including developing countries — to implement domestic intellectual property regimes that take account of their local circumstances.