C. Human Impact of International Intellectual Property Law and Policy Although the main goal of the Medicines Act was to lower the price of AIDS medicine, the pharmaceutical industries, in the United States and Europe, complained that the act was too broad. [1]The act contained the specific language that “drug patent rights shall not extend [...]
B. PROBLEMS WITH ACCESS TO ANTIVIRIALS IN SOUTH AFRICA The traditional rational of intellectual property is that society benefits from inventors researching and developing new innovations which are shared with the public. [1] More specifically, the potential benefits of the South African intellectual property system is to increase foreign and domestic investment for research and [...]
II. IMPLICATIONS BECAUSE AFRICA IS STILL IN A STATE OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY Currently, the main goal of any act dealing with AIDS vaccinations is to provide access and affordable medicine to countries in need. One such country is South Africa. Obtaining antivirals in the South Africa can range from $750- $2000 annually. [1]Problems dealing with [...]
D. Stronger Intellectual Property protection through TRIPS-Plus Trade Agreements and FTAs As previously stated, developed nations, such as the United States, are in favor or stronger intellectual property rights. Whereas, developing nations, such as South Africa, are in favor of weaker intellectual property rights. This is due to the fact that developed nations profit from [...]
Parallel Importation As previously stated, parallel importation is another method that may be used to reduce antiviral prices in Africa. Parallel importation is the process by which the original licensed purchaser buys a product and correspondingly sells it to a non-licensed third party.[1] Because pharmaceutical companies sell drugs at different prices to different nation, parallel [...]
A. Patent Rights Under TRIPS TRIPS is the only agreement established by the World Trade Organization that specifically covers intellectual property rights.[1] The TRIPS agreement sets a minimum standard for international intellectual property protection and allows individual nations to control their domestic intellectual property laws. Furthermore, when the WTO agreed to TRIPS, many different factors [...]
Written by an Austin Patent Attorney in 2009 and recently updated in 2012, this blog series will examine how South Africa complies with TRIPS and advocates that South Africa will benefit in the long term from strong international patent protection and intellectual property laws. Further, this blog post advocates that intellectual property and patent laws [...]
Companies should consider budgetary constraints are and determine where foreign filing applications may make the most economical sense for the long term. Second, companies should see where and what their market base is, as it is important to protect intellectual property rights where there invention is are sold, manufactured, and purchased in order to prevent [...]
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (referred to hereinafter as “PCT”) is an international treaty that authorizes the filing of a single patent application to be treated as being filed in multiple countries. An applicant may file a PCT application pursuant to the PCT rules, and the PCT application will act as a word-wide patent application where [...]
The United States is a member nation of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. As a note, most of developed nations are part of the Paris Convention, including Japan, China, Russia, European nations, Mexico, US, etc. As a member nation, US applicants may apply for a patent in any of the signatory [...]