Research On The Channel Of International Law For Developing Countries To Obtain Pharmaceutical Patents

The TRIPS Agreement is an international agreement to protect intellectual property rights.Patents are one of the rights that are protected.As the TRIPS Agreement takes into account patent monopolies which is the natural basis of patent law,therefore it creates mechanism to balance between the protection of patents and public interest by establishing flexible TRIPS Agreements.Also,considering to differences between developed and developing countries,TRIPS Agreements has established special privileges for developing countries and least developed countries during the transitional periods.However,due to the various limitations of developing countries,this may prevent the TRIPS Agreement from being used as it should,particularly when developing countries face a public health crisis.As a result,it leads to the Doha Declaration.When the world faces with the epidemic of COVID-19 which is the greatest public health emergency.The epidemic has seriously affected the public health of all countries and there is still no sign that it would be over.To solve this public health problem,it requires accessing to vaccines and medicines as quickly as possible.As vaccines and medicines are protected by intellectual property laws,the proportion of accessing to vaccines and medicines between developed and developing countries is significantly different.Therefore,developing countries need to use legal approaches to increase the accessing to vaccines and medicines.Although,in recent years,patent owners have begun to grant voluntary patents in order to avoid enforcing legal rights,they still do not grant rights to all countries.Therefore,developing countries that do not obtain this right still have to use legal approaches such as TRIPS Agreement for accessing to vaccines and medicines.This thesis will study on international law,TRIPS flexibility rules,security exceptions,compulsory licenses,other flexible methods such as parallel imports for the purpose of examining both usage method,advantages and legal considerations under the existing TRIPS flexibility including public health problems in the past examples of experiences,using the flexible TRIPS to access to medicines agreement by developing countries and the adoption of flexible TRIPS Agreements in various countries in the COVID-19 situation with actual usage examples to propose a way for developing countries to use flexible TRIPS agreements for accessing to vaccines and medicines in this coronavirus situation which is the greatest public health emergency.Chapter One: The COVID-19 outbreak has had a serious impact on the country’s public health system.It presents the concept of the world’s public goods and the vaccine nationalism concept of developed countries,the need of developing countries to access vaccines and medicines,a legal approaches to make medicines and vaccines available to developing countries based on TRIPS Agreement and the use of TRIPS flexibility rules.Chapter Two: The inequality situation between developed and developing countries i.e.India and South Africa including the call for abolition of patents on vaccines and medicines under the WTO Agreement by a number of developing countries.This chapter examines the security exceptions of Article 73 of the TRIPS Agreement based on Panel Report,DS512: Russia–Measures concerning traffic in transit and DS567:Saudi Arabia–Intellectual Property Rights.As the COVID-19 situation is an emergency in international relations,members can claim to waive compliance with TRIPS to exempt for patent protection.Chapter Three: Compulsory licensing is now becoming an important tool for accessing COVID-19 medical products and technologies.Several countries have amended their laws to facilitate easier and quicker processes for compulsory licenses or government use licenses in the pandemic.Study the terms of use,past experiences of developing countries with successful access to cancer and AIDS drugs through compulsory deployment licenses in the patent law of each country during the COVID-19 pandemic,including actual use,raise the issue of how Section 31 bis affects developing countries regarding medicines.Chapter four: Explore the use of other TRIPS flexible agreements,such as parallel imports and patentable subject matter for access to vaccines and medicines in developing countries.Conclusion: The three methods that this thesis proposes above is a way to address public health problems that developing countries can follow under TRIPS Agreement.Specifically,its parallel use and import are guaranteed in Article 5 of the Doha Declaration which confirms that members can use such measures in cases related to public health benefits,in particular promoting access to medicine for all.