Coalition statement attacks USTR's IP proposal for TPP

"Over the last three years, the undersigned groups[i], public health and development experts[ii], the Vatican[iii], Members of Congress[iv], and United States trading partners[v] in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations have repeatedly expressed concerns about the public health and global access to medicines implications of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) efforts to augment pharmaceutical monopoly power by creating excessive and additional intellectual property (IP) norms in the TPP. In response, in November 2013, during the Salt Lake City round of TPP negotiations, United States trade negotiators proposed a 'differential treatment approach' to the TPP IP chapter claiming to be extending some of the public health flexibilities included in the 2007 New Trade Policy (May 10 Agreement) to the developing countries currently negotiating the TPP.[vi]   We are deeply concerned about the public health implications that these measures will have for millions of patients in need of access to affordable medicines around the whole Asia-Pacific region, and about the mischaracterization of this proposal as being coherent with the May 10 Agreement. This 'new' approach not only preserves the life-threatening and access-restricting proposals that USTR has been pushing since 2011, forcing all TPP countries to go far beyond internationally agreed World Trade Organization obligations contained in the Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS), but also fails to provide adequate recognition of the urgent access to medicines needs of patients living in developing countries. Recognizing the detrimental impact of excessive IP protections for developing countries, the May 10 Agreement took a necessary, though still insufficient step in the right direction. The deal provided developing countries negotiating trade agreements with the United States at the time—Peru, Colombia and Panama—flexibilities for the implementation of the most burdensome IP provisions on the table during those negotiations (patent linkage, patent term extensions, and data exclusivity). We are concerned that even the principles of the May 10 Agreement—to avoid the harmful effects of excessive IP protections in less wealthy countries where many people still live in poverty—are not being maintained in the TPP negotiations. Specifically, we are concerned that the USTR proposal will impose undue burdens on public health in the following ways ..."