Tackling the Proliferation of Patents: How to Avoid Undue Limitations to Competition and the Public Domain
The steady increase in patent applications and grants that is taking place in developed and some developing countries (notably in China) is sometimes hailed as evidence of the strength of global innovation and of the role of the patent system in encouraging it. However, such an increase does not correspond to a genuine augmentation in innovation. (more…)
Obstacles to Development in the Global Economic System
I. Obstacles to Development Arising from the International System
As the international community wades into the political discussions regarding the alternatives to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015 and the design of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as mandated by the Rio+20 conference, it is timely to consider the question of whether development is a matter mostly of individual effort on the part of nation-states or whether there are elements in the international economic system that could serve as significant obstacles to national development efforts. (more…)
Crisis Mismanagement in the United States and Europe: Impact on Developing Countries and Longer-Term Consequences
There are two major failings in policy interventions in the crisis in the US and Europe: the reluctance to remove the debt overhang through timely, orderly and comprehensive restructuring and the shift to fiscal austerity after an initial reflation. These have resulted in excessive reliance on monetary means with central banks entering uncharted policy waters, including zero-bound interest rates and the acquisition of long-term public and private bonds. (more…)
Public-private Partnerships in Global Health: Putting Business before Health?
Public and private sector interaction in health has always existed at the national level; in the United Nations (UN) system, public-private partnerships (PPPs) started at the end of the 1990s with the reform of the UN system launched by Kofi Annan. (more…)
Waving Or Drowning: Developing Countries After The Financial Crisis
Not only has the “Great Recession” led to a “Great Slowdown” in developing countries, but also their longer-term growth prospects are clouded by global structural imbalances and fragilities that culminated in the current crisis. (more…)
Access to Medicines and Intellectual Property: The contribution of the World Health Organization
The topic of intellectual property first appeared in the WHO in 1996 and coincided with the end of the Uruguay Round and the creation of the World Trade Organization. In 1995 the Charles III University of Madrid with the WHO Drugs Action Programme (DAP) organized a conference where Professor Carlos Correa presented a paper entitled “The Uruguay Round and Drugs”. (more…)
Asian Initiatives at Monetary and Financial Integration: A Critical Review.
Whilst the first steps towards Asian trade cooperation stated in 1970s, it was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 that triggered Asian efforts at monetary and financial integration. This paper argues that the conditions for Asian monetary integration are not conducive but that efforts at monetary cooperation should proceed at three fronts – exchange rate cooperation, coordination of capital flows control, and strengthening of regional financial liquidity management as in the Chiang Mai Initiative and regional surveillance. (more…)
Climate Change, Technology And Intellectual Property Rights: Context And Recent Negotiations.
This Research Paper discusses on contexts and recent negotiations in Technology Transfer, Sustainable Development and Climate Change. In terms of proprietary rights, the author categories technologies and related products into three domains: the Public Technologies; Patented Technologies and Future Technologies. (more…)
The Staggering Rise of the South?
This paper argues that the unprecedented acceleration of growth in the developing world in the new millennium in comparison with advanced economies is due not so much to improvements in underlying fundamentals as to exceptionally favourable global economic conditions, shaped mainly by unsustainable policies in advanced economies. The only developing economy which has had a major impact on global conditions, notably on commodity prices, is China. (more…)
Mechanisms for International Cooperation in Research and Development: Lessons for the Context of Climate Change.
This Research Paper examines possible modalities of collaboration for research and development (R&D), understood as comprehensive of scientific studies and of activities for the generation of new processes and products and the improvement of existing ones . It briefly discusses, first, the various sources of technology for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. (more…)
Rethinking Global Health: A Binding Convention for R&D for Pharmaceutical Products.
This Research Paper is a contribution to the debate and reform process of the WHO to enable it to respond to the health and health policy challenges of the twenty-first century. More specifically, this paper addresses the issue of the pharmaceutical innovation system within the perspective of access to medicines, exploring possible structural changes in the current system. (more…)
Pharmaceutical Innovation, Incremental Patenting and Compulsory Licensing.
Despite the decline in the discovery of new chemical entities for pharmaceutical use, there is a significant proliferation of patents on products and processes that cover minor, incremental innovations. A study conducted in five developing countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa – evidenced a significant proliferation of ‘evergreening’ pharmaceutical patents that can block generic competition and thereby limit access to medicines. (more…)
