Global Governance In Intellectual Property

In the era of globalization featured by knowledge-based economy, intellectual property, with the flow of technology, breaks the restraints of national boundaries and goes global. In this process, the paradox between private and public characters inherent in intellectual property has externalized to the international arena. In the international community without a unified authority, the imbalance between intellectual property rights and public interests has evolved into a new global issue, thus a new issue area in global governance. Since drug patents are a kind of intellectual property concerning the health of human beings, the conflict between the economic interests of drug patents and the interests of public health constitutes one of the most acute conflicts in the globalization of intellectual property. In order to resolve this conflict, a variety of actors including multinational corporations, countries, international organizations and NGO interact with one another on different levels, thus propelling the whole governance in interaction.In the 1980s, the overseas interests of American multinational corporations represented by Pifzer were greatly hit by generic industries. PMA associated by American pharmaceutical companies as well as other knowledge industries took the opportunity of American economic downturn to lobby against the American government in transforming American patent policies. Since then, America began to regard the interest of intellectual property right as its core interest and spared no effort in promoting the high level standard of intellectual property protection. In Uruguay Round, America took "Special 301" as a weapon to threaten countries like Brazil and India, and destabilized the G10 which was made of 10 developing countries. America also allied with Europe, Japan, Canada and other developed countries by means of NAFTA and IPC, and formulated a high level of intellectual property standard, namely TRIPS, with restricted drug patents included.After TRIPS took effect, America has reaped the benefits globally, however, the AIDS epidemic reversed the situation. At the end of the 20th century, AIDS broke out in South Africa and Brazil, but the prices of drugs remained prohibitive because of the patents. These countries resorted to the flexible provisions under TRIPS, which the developed countries and pharmaceutical corporations strongly opposed. With the aid of international organizations and NGO, some pharmaceutical corporations agreed to make a compromise in prices with these AIDS-affected countries. In Seattle Conference, developed countries led by America firstly broke the taboo in discussing the compulsory licensing in public health under TRIPS. International conferences like World Health Assembly, G8 became aware of the negative impact of TRIPS on public health. With these changes, the picture of global intellectual property governance began to show a promising prospect conducive to public interest.In June of 2001, delegates from African groups and developing countries proposed to revise provisions concerning public health under TRIPS. During this fierce debate, delegates from the developed and the developing parties finally made a compromise and declared the Doha Declaration. TRIPS council subsequently convened to solve the remaining problems after the Doha Declaration. On August 30th,2003, the TRIPS council made the revision of the 6th paragraph of the declaration and proposed the revision of TRIPS in 2005. However, the revision failed to win the consensus of more 2/3 of the member countries, so the TRIPS remained unchanged. In post-TRIPS era, developing countries and the least developed countries have managed to use flexible provisions to implement compulsory licensing through which these countries effectively safeguard their public health. On the contrary, some developed countries have used FTA and TPP to restrict the use of flexible provisions. Because of the limited authority of international organizations and NGO, there is still an arduous way for the global governance of the pharmaceutical patents.From the whole process of TRIPS negotiations concerning drug patents, it is clear that the international community has made much progress to strike a balance between intellectual property rights and public interests, which is one of the most successful cases in global governance of intellectual property. With the increasing importance in intellectual property against the background of globalization, more and more interest bodies will have a more frequent interaction, and the picture of global governance in intellectual property will unfold in a wider range of complex issues.