Drugs Parallel Importation Of The Trips Agreement,

Along with the globalization of economic, the infectious diseases spread at an unprecedented rate in less developed countries since the 70s of 20th century, so that these countries fall into a public health crisis. In the face of public health crisis, developing countries seem helpless mainly because the high medical cost which is due to the high standard protection of pharmaceutical patents under the TRIPs. Parallel importation of drugs, a balance between medicine patent and public health, plays an important role in increasing the availability of drugs and addressing public health crises, while involved in many international disputes. Based on the detailed analysis of TRIPs Agreement, the paper aims to clarify its attitude on the parallel importation of drugs and how the developing countries should use TRIPs flexibility to make parallel importation of drugs legally.In structure, the article is divided into four chapters:The first chapter is an overview of the parallel importation of drugs, including the definition, the constituent elements and its meaning to the public health, and most importantly is the exhaustion of rights principle, which determines the legal status of parallel import.The second chapter is the analysis of the TRIPs agreement about the parallel import of drugs. First of all, Article 6 provisions on exhaustion of rights allows the members to decide its principle of exhaustion of rights, which means the legality of parallel imports medicines are matters of national sovereignty discretion. Secondly, Article 7 and 8 demonstrates that the purposes and principles of TRIPs is not just to protect the pharmaceutical patents, but also take account into the public health.. After the Doha Declaration, although adopted amendments to Article 31 of TRIPs limits the parallel importation of drug, but it is the first time explicitly parallel importation of drugs into the agreement. TRIPs agreement can be deemed to acknowledge the parallel importation of drugs in a certain degree, but also bring obstacles to the developing countries for its ambiguity of the terms.Chapter Three is the analysis from the perspective of the TRIPs agreement about the three representative cases of parallel importation of drugs, including 39 multinational pharmaceutical companies v. the Government of South Africa, the anthrax crisis in the United States and Canada, 2008 "Cheap and Widely Available Medicine Act"in the Philippines. All of them reflect the different TRIPs strategy adopted by the developing and developed countries on the issue of parallel importation of drugs, and further clarified the TRIPs agreement in the actual dispute the legitimacy of parallel importation of drugs to solve what role play.The last chapter summarizes the current protection of TRIPs agreement provided for parallel importation of drugs, and invokes how developing countries should invoke the terms of its flexibility to respond to public health crisis. I believe that the Member States in complying with the TRIPs agreement can be implemented under the premise of the principle of international exhaustion of rights, allowing parallel importation of drugs legalized. Meanwhile, in the national pharmaceutical patent laws should be modified or formulated for the purpose to protect public health, and preventing the abuse of parallel importation of drugs is also necessary.