Civil society groups wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, slamming the compromise outcome to combat Covid using flexibilities in the global intellectual property rights agreement, and urged India reject the proposed text and resist the “unreasonable demands of the EU and US”.
The letter – whose signatories included Mumbai’s Forum for Medical Ethics Society, National Working Group on Patent Laws and WTO, and Karnataka’s Drug Action Forum – requested the PM to “direct the commerce minister not to take any decision on the waiver agenda without consultation with his technical staff/negotiators”.
Members of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, AIDAN, National Law University‘s (Delhi) assistant professor Sophy K Joseph, public health researcher Sarojini N and Campaign for Access to Medicines, Diagnostics and Devices (CAMD) India, were the other signatories.
The compromise, called the “outcome of the quadrilateral discussions,” was reached after talks among a subgroup of WTO countries, including India, South Africa, the US and the EU, and is being discussed at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“We would like to bring to your attention that the proposed solution is not a waiver but a compulsory licence mechanism with constitutions that goes beyond the requirements of the TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) pact,” said the letter.
In 2020, India and South Africa had proposed a comprehensive waiver of certain provisions of copyrights, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information in the TRIPS agreement for available Covid-19 treatments, technology and vaccines to help countries fight the pandemic. The move is now sponsored by 65 WTO members.
They requested the PM to “instruct” the commerce and industry ministry to “reject the so-called consensus text on TRIPS waiver emerged from the informal discussions of the EU, US, South Africa and India”. The proposed solution imposes a condition to list all patents to use a compulsory licence and makes it obligatory for countries to notify the TRIPS Council with all the details of the compulsory licence such as name of the company, quantity, export destination and duration of authorisation. “These conditions create a chilling effect on the actual deployment of the proposed solution,” said the letter sent by civil society groups.
(Catch all the Business News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)
Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.