Sri Lanka IP News
The role of medical patents in a developing country-Feb 2009
Sri Lanka have just celebrated it 61st National Day recently and although there is a fine democracy in place, it could have been even better if not for the crushing effects of foreign medical patents that is robbing much of the people a decent and affordable medicine. Sri Lanka, like many of the developing countries would like to champion the development of less costly generic drugs, especially for the treatment of HIV patients. It has therefore been campaigning for international trade agreements that will exclude medicines from patent protection. The campaign was to promote alternative generics as people in these regions can’t afford to pay for brand name products.
As part of the proposed healthcare reform in the US, where tough decisions would have to be made to reduce or deny payment for new drugs and procedures that are not as effective as the existing old and established ones, Sri Lanka would hope that these reforms will also include prescribing low priced generics and not the more expensive brand name drugs.
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From over the neighboring country of India, there has been much concern lately regarding the production of generics. Last year Bayer sued the Indian government in the Delhi High Court for giving marketing approval to Cipla for Bayer's patented cancer drug Sorafenib(an essential cancer fighting drug). Health groups in Asia and Germany call on German drug maker Bayer to cancel the suit against the Indian government and the Indian generic manufacturer Cipla in order to protect affordable drug treatment. Bayer would have wished for a delay on the rights of the generic drug manufacturers to continue on those essential life saving medicines. The outcome of the suit would have grave implications for the less developed countries, many of which cannot afford to pay out huge sums of their hard earned money for imported medications.
The Sri Lanka National Medicinal Drug Policy (NMDP) was adopted by parliament in 2006 and one of the components is the enactment and implementation of legislation requiring generic prescribing and allowing cost effective generic substitution with the consent of the patient. However, there has been opposition by vested interest groups leading to the non-implementation of the NMDP up till now, but it has become urgent for the Minister of Health to break the impasse and to enforce the new rulings, especially now with the world financial crises bearing upon the country.
Efforts by the European Union to insert strong provisions on pharmaceutical patents in a series of free trade agreements it is negotiating could imperil access to medicines in developing countries, global public health activists have alleged.
As part of trade talks being conducted with India, Colombia, Peru and a regional grouping in south-east Asia, EU officials have proposed that drug-makers should benefit from a robust intellectual property regime. National regulatory authorities in the countries concerned would be prevented for lengthy periods from using data provided by a company that holds a drug patent in order to authorise a generic version of that medicine.
IPR will make or break the country’s survival
Sri Lanka, which is an agriculture based country, does not have the requisite law to attract commercial R & D regimes because new innovations cannot be filed for protection. This was stated by Samantha Ranatunga, chief executive of the listed Chemical Industries (Colombo) in a recent interview. There is much to be done on the island’s intellectual property law, especially where IP protection is the main issue where it comes to FDI is concern. CIC, which holds the largest piece of agriculture land on a private basis in Sri Lanka, would like to see protections in agriculture innovations before it can put its money in the emerging biotechnology arena. Hopefully, the Sri Lankan government will speedily rectify this short coming as soon as possible, otherwise it would stand to loose this great opportunity to re-invent the country’s economic base to better compete with its neighbors.
November 19, 2009
Do you know where to get ‘Ceylon’ tea?
You have certainly heard of ‘Ceylon’ tea, but if you are below fifteen years of age, you would certainly not know where ‘Ceylon’ is. The reason is because Ceylon is now known as Sri Lanka and you would not have heard of people calling ‘Sri Lanka’ tea. Incidentally, ‘Ceylon’ tea is considered a premium brand for tea drinkers throughout the world. So in order not to dilute the brand, the Sri Lankan Tea Board is filing ‘Ceylon’ tea as a Geographical Indicator protection first in its native country, and then followed by international applications. There are seven districts in Sri Lanka where ‘Ceylon’ tea is grown, and in order to get distinct protection, a processing factory is built in each of these districts. The whole GI exercise is expected to take two years for completion.
December 30, 2009.