Activists push for drug patent reforms

Health activists have called on the Department of Trade and Industry to drive through sweeping patent law reforms which they say are needed to bring down the cost of medicines, as the deadline closed for comments on its draft intellectual property policy.

While the draft policy was criticised by Stellenbosch University's intellec¬tual property law unit, which described it as unsystematic, confusing and rid¬dled with errors, health activists and pharmaceutical multinationals have nevertheless seized the opportunity to lobby for their position.

The stakes are high, with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Treat¬ment Action Campaign (TAC) pushing for changes that they say will increase competition and drive down medicine prices, while the Innovative Pharma¬ceutical Association of SA (Ipasa) is arguing that there are already many provisions in South Africa's laws that facilitate access to generic medicines.

The TAC's Gauteng secretary, Andrew Mosane, said this policy was not just about legal technicalities. It would directly affect the health and lives of many millions of people. He said that by fixing the patent laws, South Africa could lower prices of existing medicines and create incentives for the devel¬opment of new and improved treat¬ments to tackle the diseases people lived with every day.

The joint TAC-MSF submission said South Africa paid "artificially high" prices for medicines because it "blindly handed out patents" without examining applications to see if they met the criteria defined in the Patents Act. This allowed pharmaceutical companies to get multiple patents on the same medicine by making small changes, even when such changes had no benefit for patients.

Ipasa spokeswoman Val Beaumont said most of the patents granted in South Africa for medicines made by multinational pharmaceutical companies had already been subjected to substantive examination in other jurisdictions. She said Ipasa supported the concept of granting strong patents, but what was of concern was that the introduction of such a system could result in unintended delays in the registration of patents.

The activists' submission was accompanied by an open letter signed by more than 130 academics, advocacy groups and civil society organisations from around the world supporting their position. Changes to South Africa 's laws were needed to prevent excessive patenting and other barriers to generic entry to the market, and thus drive price competition, they said.

In addition to a patent examination system, the activists are calling for measures to allow opposition before and after patents are granted, and greater public access to information about patent applications. They also want reforms to make it easier for the government to use provisions in the World Trade Organi¬sation's agreement on "trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights" to issue compulsory licences and allow parallel importation of medicines.

 Although there are provisions in the current Medicines Act that allow compulsory licensing, the activists say it would cost so much money and take so long to get one issued that it is not practical to do so. Beaumont said Ipasa was con¬cerned that pre- and post-grant objec¬tions could provide the opportunity for "frivolous" opposition.

Tamar Kahn: Business Day, 18 October 2013