Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) cautioned on Wednesday that the measures regarding intellectual property (IP) rights in the draught India-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement (FTA) may harm the worldwide supply of generic medications. The worldwide organisation claimed in a press release that while affordable medicine helps save lives in at-risk populations around the globe, the intellectual property portion of the India-UK FTA contains “damaging IP restrictions.” The contentious proposals put forth by the U.K. will “tighten the screws on producing, supplying, and exporting affordable generic medications from India,” according to the IP-related chapter, which was released on October 31.
“The U.K. government should entirely retract this leaked IP chapter due to the potentially terrible effects it could have on the availability of generic medications worldwide.India should stay vigilant and not allow barriers to affordable medicines to be written into FTA negotiations,” Leena Menghaney, South Asia head of MSF’s Access Campaign, said.
MSF contends in a “Fact Sheet” that the proposal for “harmonisation” of Indian patent law with British law will result in the weakening of crucial protections required for the production of generic medications and vaccines.
Both parties “must not” make patent opposition processes accessible PRIOR to the award of a patent, according to Article E.10 of the leaked IP chapter. The U.K. does not have a pre-grant opposition system, so in practise, this provision only applies to India. This is in direct conflict with Indian patent law, which permits patent opposition proceedings both before and after the grant of a patent, according to the MSF’s observations on the IP provisions.
MSF pointed out that under the proposals from the U.K., even treatment providers could be subjected to legal actions for prescribing generic medicines for which India is one of the largest manufacturing hubs. MSF said that the IP provisions brought up by the U.K. opened up possibilities for “excessive enforcement” that are likely to create difficulties for both Indian pharmaceutical companies as well as the legal set-up.
MSF highlighted that another problematic provision is Article J.11 of the leaked IP chapter. Under this provision, Customs officials could block legitimate medicines from leaving India for other developing countries if a multinational pharmaceutical corporation was to claim that their patents were being infringed upon by the Indian product. “Furthermore, Article J.5 and J.7 prescribe how courts should adjudicate IP disputes, which could impact [Indian] judicial discretion,” MSF said.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has not yet responded to the points raised by MSF.
