HCMC – Although 19 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiation rounds have completed, many experts said that the intellectual property issue has yet to make improvements and remains an obstacle during the TPP negotiation process.

Pham Duy Nghia, head of the law faculty of the University of Economics, recently told the Daily that the U.S. has applied high standards of intellectual property right it has obtained during trade partnership negotiations with South Korea.

Meanwhile, Vietnam is still struggling with standards of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Standards at a higher level are referred to by experts as TRIPS+.

The standards have caused big challenges for developing countries, raising objections from TPP negotiation teams and business communities of the nations, especially Vietnam.

Last August, Vu Tien Loc, president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), wrote a letter to Ambassador Ron Kirk, who was the U.S. Trade Representative at that time, to express his concerns over the Intellectual Properties Chapter in TPP.

“This TPP could impose challenges that might not be overcome and thus cause adverse and terrible impacts on a considerable and fragile part of Vietnam’s population… The current Intellectual Properties Chapter Draft in TPP will, thus, be the main factor undermining quality of life, limiting incomes of poor people, aggravate social gaps and instability,” according to the letter.

The letter quoted a report of the World Health Organization (WHO) that said in Vietnam, patients actually pay 46.58 times the international reference prices for innovator brands and 11.41 times for the lowest priced generics, while Vietnam has just “graduated” from the low-income country.

Too-high-priced medicines are the main reason leading to too-low percentage of access-to-medicine in Vietnam, with only 20% in general and 13% for maternal-child medicines. If the current Intellectual Properties Chapter Draft is passed, all chances for reducing medicine prices in Vietnam shall be killed, and the situation shall thus be worse, the letter said.

In case proposals of the U.S. are passed, Vietnam will probably apply compulsory licensing to cope with the problem, Pham Phi Anh, deputy head of the National Office of Intellectual Property, said in a recent seminar in HCMC.

It means that in case community benefits are threatened, the State may force pharmaceutical enterprises to grant licenses so that the nation may produce medicines with lower prices.

Source: Saigon news

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