TRIPS and Essential Medicines: Must One Size Fit All? Making the WTO Responsive to the Global Health Crisis

Abstract

This paper was written as the introductory chapter to Incentives for Global Health: Patent Law and Access to Essential Medicines, edited by Thomas Pogge, Matthew Rimmer, and Kim Rubenstein (Cambridge University Press). It challenges the critique of the TRIPS Agreement as a one-size-fits-all regime. To be sure, there are WTO members who prefer to think of the Agreement that way. However, the paper demonstrates how the flexibilities built into the TRIPS Agreement allow a state to fashion local law to deal with its population’s health needs. TRIPS accommodations are not perfect: the second part of the paper considers the roles that other international organizations, such as WHO, and other international obligations, such as human rights agreements, can be used to influence the development and interpretation of international intellectual property law.

Keywords: international intellectual property law, health, intellectual property law, TRIPS Agreement

JEL Classification: I1, K32, K33, O34