Answer:

WTO's TRIPS Agreement has been in force since 1995 and is to date the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property. The TRIPS Agreement requires all WTO members, with a few exceptions, to adapt their laws to the minimum standards of IPR protection.

However, TRIPS also contains provisions that allow a degree of flexibility and sufficient room for countries to accommodate their own patent and intellectual property systems and developmental needs. The TRIPS Agreement provides for transition periods, permitting developing countries additional time to bring national legislation and practices into conformity with TRIPS provisions. Member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed to extend the transition period for adherence to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) among least-developed countries (LDCs). It means, LDCs need not comply with international rules of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection for pharmaceutical patents till up to 2021.

LDCs need to use this opportunity to productively and imaginatively promote access to drugs, vaccines and diagnostics in the following ways:

♤ Since, for many such countries options are limited by the small size of their markets and lack of indigenous technological, productive and regulatory capacities; this lack of capacity to create a competitive environment needs to be addressed.

♤ Further, the economics of supply to an individual country with a limited market may be insufficient to attract potential generics suppliers. To allow, therefore, for economies of scale and a degree of competition, it is important that small markets engage together as much as is possible.

♤ Intellectual Property Management:

o These countries need to consolidate new approaches to intellectual property management for public health.

o A new platform for benefit sharing - WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework has emerged, since the time when Indonesia focused the

attention of the global health community on sharing of viruses. It enables the sharing of benefits derived from such viruses and includes new methods of management of related intellectual property (IP) through developing Standard Material Transfer Agreements. In turn, these provide for a range of options for biological material recipients, such as influenza vaccine manufacturers, to enter into benefit-sharing agreements.

o The success of the PIP framework has opened the door to exploring future collaborations in access to medicines, both traditional and modern. Moreover, quite often, traditional medicines provide lead for the development of new treatments, with many modern medicines being originally based on herbal products.

o Since LDCs have a wide variety of genetic resources, they need to explore strategies to optimize the lessons of PIP in the context of medical products.

o Thus it can be safely concluded that LDCs should use the intellectual-property window over, say, the next eight years to address the issue of access to medicines for the longer term.