• Home
• Responsibility
• Our values and policies
• Intellectual property
• WTO and the Trips agreement

WTO and the Trips agreement

Intellectual property rights are protected globally by the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS).

The TRIPS Agreement was signed by all WTO member countries in 1994 and covers all types of intellectual property including patents, copyright and trademarks. It requires intellectual property rights to be protected in all WTO member countries.

The Agreement covers all areas of business and society including software, music, and the arts and is designed to encourage innovation in all business sectors.
Developing countries have been given extra time to comply with TRIPS. Some countries (e.g. India) had until 2005 to introduce patents for pharmaceuticals. The 49 least developed countries of the world (e.g. Rwanda, Gambia) have until 2016 to comply with the Agreement with respect to pharmaceuticals and until 2013 for all other sectors.

Patents, TRIPS and access to medicines
There have been concerns that patents and the TRIPS Agreement restrict access to medicines for people in developing countries by making it difficult for them to obtain cheap generic versions of important drugs, such as those used to treat HIV/AIDS. However, the TRIPS Agreement contains a number of public health safeguards that have been clarified by the WTO.

Concerns over TRIPS and access to medicines were addressed in 2001, at the WTO Ministerial in Doha, when WTO Ministers confirmed that intellectual property protection is important for the development of new medicines and that it does not and should not restrict members' rights to protect public health. They also agreed that the TRIPS Agreement could and should be implemented and interpreted in a way that supports public health, and promotes access to medicines.

This understanding was captured in the Doha Declaration on Trips and Public Health  (the Doha Declaration), which confirmed the rights of member countries to use the flexibilities in TRIPS to protect public health priorities, such as compulsory licensing. Compulsory licensing allows governments to issue a licence so a patented product can be manufactured without the consent of the patent owner.

The WTO members further agreed to modify the TRIPS provisions relating to compulsory licensing, in August 2003, so that countries unable to produce pharmaceuticals domestically can import patented drugs made under compulsory licensing from abroad. This provision was confirmed as an amendment to the TRIPS agreement by the WTO in Devember 2005.

GSK supports the Doha Declaration and the agreement on compulsory licensing. We are committed to playing a key role in the access crisis through research into diseases affecting the developing world, by preferential pricing agreements with developing countries and through our community investment programme.

We believe that protection for intellectual property is essential to support continued investment in the search for new medicines. This view is shared by Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, who has said "Intellectual property protection is key to bringing forward new medicines, vaccines and diagnostics urgently needed for the health of the world's poorest people".

GSK does not believe that the TRIPS Agreement prevents people in the developing world from getting access to medicines. There is little or no patent protection for many vital medicines such as treatments for malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoeal diseases, which kill millions of people a year. Over ninety five percent of the medicines on the World Health Organisation’s Essential Medicines List are not patent protected anywhere in the world, yet the WHO says that one third of the world’s population do not have regular access to these drugs, in Africa this figure rises to half the population who do not have access to these basic, but essential, medicines. In India, where there are no patents and a thriving generic drug industry, which supplies treatments for HIV/AIDS, access for people who need these treatments is no greater than in Africa where some patents exist.

Poverty is the biggest barrier to effective healthcare in the developing world because it usually implies a poorly developed healthcare infrastructure with little or no access to doctors and hospitals. The significant barriers that stand in the way of access to medicines in the developing world must be tackled as a shared responsibility by all sectors of global society. The pharmaceutical industry can play an important role, but it does not have the mandate, expertise or resources to deliver healthcare unilaterally to developing countries. Commitment and funding is needed from governments, international non-government organisations, the private sector and affected communities.

Back to top