TRIPS Flexibility and Public Health
Hello delegates!
For this week's topical blog post on the first topic, we will be talking about the TRIPS flexibilities and especially how its application in the public health realm affects innovation in the related field.
One interesting article on this topic is The Impact of Intellectual Property Regulation on Global Medical Technology Innovation by Tiffany E Chao and Gita N Mody. (The link of which can be found here: https://innovations.bmj.com/content/bmjinnov/1/2/49.full.pdf)
The article focuses on the protection of intellectual property rights and medical technology innovation in low resource setting. The authors argue that the current international intellectual property rights protection is not in the interest of local innovative incentives of the developing countries.
Several reasons are summarized by the author -
First, lack of incentives for innovators to seek IP protection is especially common in low-resource setting environment. Some of the reasons include high cost, long time and tedious logistics of filing and protecting patent, limited knowledge of the complicated international intellectual property rights system and lack of strict domestic regulations.
Second, the author implies that there is an inadequate application of TRIPS flexibilities especially in the medical technological innovation field.
Moreover, the authors have listed a few potential solutions to the issue -
One of them is promotion of open-source innovation. Some of the other approaches include removing the administrative barriers for innovative projects in the IP system in developing countries and consolidating the enforcement of TRIPS flexibilities with international negotiation and rigorous private-public partnership.
Here are a few questions to help you further your understanding of this topic with regard to your country's policy!
For this week's topical blog post on the first topic, we will be talking about the TRIPS flexibilities and especially how its application in the public health realm affects innovation in the related field.
One interesting article on this topic is The Impact of Intellectual Property Regulation on Global Medical Technology Innovation by Tiffany E Chao and Gita N Mody. (The link of which can be found here: https://innovations.bmj.com/content/bmjinnov/1/2/49.full.pdf)
The article focuses on the protection of intellectual property rights and medical technology innovation in low resource setting. The authors argue that the current international intellectual property rights protection is not in the interest of local innovative incentives of the developing countries.
Several reasons are summarized by the author -
First, lack of incentives for innovators to seek IP protection is especially common in low-resource setting environment. Some of the reasons include high cost, long time and tedious logistics of filing and protecting patent, limited knowledge of the complicated international intellectual property rights system and lack of strict domestic regulations.
Second, the author implies that there is an inadequate application of TRIPS flexibilities especially in the medical technological innovation field.
Moreover, the authors have listed a few potential solutions to the issue -
One of them is promotion of open-source innovation. Some of the other approaches include removing the administrative barriers for innovative projects in the IP system in developing countries and consolidating the enforcement of TRIPS flexibilities with international negotiation and rigorous private-public partnership.
Here are a few questions to help you further your understanding of this topic with regard to your country's policy!
- What is your country's perspective on TRIPS flexibilities? (a.k.a what are the perceived advantages and disadvantages of implementing the TRIPS flexibilities in your country in theory and in reality?)
- Why is public health realm instinctively different from other fields?
- How is the innovation environment in your country? (e.g. administrative resources/innovation need etc.)
Feel free to comment below your country's thoughts and potential questions to discuss among committee members!
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