Book Review: Human Rights and the WTO: The Case of Patents and Access to Medicines, by Holger Hestermeyer

The IP Book Law Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 46-49, June 2010

5 Pages Posted: 12 Jul 2010

See all articles by Andrew W. Torrance

Andrew W. Torrance

University of Kansas School of Law; MIT Sloan School of Management

Date Written: July 7, 2010

Abstract

Human rights and patent rights have become increasingly intertwined in discussions surrounding access to pharmaceutical drugs by citizens of developing countries. This discussion is a particularly contentious one for reasons of socioeconomics and geography. Drug companies in more developed countries (“MDCs”) tend to own the patent rights covering newer medicines, and justify the monopoly prices they charge as a necessary return on investment for inventing new drugs. Less developed countries (“LDCs”), lacking the purchasing power to pay monopoly prices for patented drugs, tend to argue that monopoly prices for drugs violate human rights of access to medicines. The result is an often shrill debate over the primacy of patent rights or human rights. In his excellent book, HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE WTO: THE CASE OF PATENTS AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES, Holger Hestermeyer has tackled this complex and contentious conflict, disentangled it into its essential constituent parts, including patent law, human rights, and international trade under the World Trade Organisation (“WTO”) regime and its side-agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (“TRIPS”), and then artfully reconstructed a clear, cogent, and hopeful model of how to approach a resolution. His research is meticulous, his prose spare yet fluent, and his arguments persuasive and well-supported.

Keywords: patent, patent law, patent rights, drug, medicine, pharmaceutical, human rights, access to medicine, international trade, World Trade Organization, WTO, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, TRIPS, less developed country, developing country

JEL Classification: K00, K11, K19, K23, K29, K30, K32, K33, K39, K40, K42, K49, F13, I18, L43, O31, O32, O34, O38

Suggested Citation

Torrance, Andrew W., Book Review: Human Rights and the WTO: The Case of Patents and Access to Medicines, by Holger Hestermeyer (July 7, 2010). The IP Book Law Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 46-49, June 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1635965

Andrew W. Torrance (Contact Author)

University of Kansas School of Law ( email )

Green Hall
1535 W. 15th Street
Lawrence, KS 66045-7577
United States

MIT Sloan School of Management ( email )

100 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

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