Sherrod Brown: “Both of these practices, parallel importing and compulsory licensing, are explicitly permitted under a world trade…”

“Both of these practices, parallel importing and compulsory licensing, are explicitly permitted under a world trade agreement commonly referred to as TRIPS. The WTO TRIPS accord sets global norms for patents, for trademarks, for copyrights, and for other types of intellectual property. It is a tough set of requirements. For example, it requires all WTO member countries, including the United States, to adopt 20-year patents on medicines, even though under our patent law our patent length was 17 years. The WTO TRIPS agreement requires many poor countries to adopts rules that actually raise the price of their medicines. The USTR, on behalf of the prescription drug industry, is pushing countries to abandon fully sanctioned actions, like parallel importing and compulsory licensing. It is difficult to believe the U.S. is participating in efforts to prevent developing countries from fighting back when drug companies ignore the dire consequences of their actions and abuse their monopoly power, for example, when they impose higher prices in developing countries than in industrialized nations, as in the case with AIDS drug Fluconazole. U.S. trade officials have pressured South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and many other poor nations, threatening sanctions unless they forsake rights they have under the TRIPS agreement.”