Australian government urged to hold the line on IP protection

The Generic Medicines Industry of Australia (GMiA) is renewing its call on the Australian government to protect access to medicines in negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

The Singapore TPP round has concluded without agreement, effectively breaching the US deadline to reach an agreement. This situation will place all participating countries under increased pressure to sign an agreement when meetings resume in 2014.

The GMiA is calling on the Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb, to resist US proposals that would increase the cost of medicines to the Australian public.

These proposals will potentially undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), and restrict access to generic medicines in Australia by:

· increasing exclusive rights over patent linkage;
· increasing patent term extensions;
· extending periods of data exclusivity; and
· extending Australia’s periods of intellectual property (IP).

These US-proposed measures represent intellectual property privileges that would expand and prolong patent monopolies at the expense of affordable access to medicines, says the GMiA, calling on the Australian government to hold the line to protect Australia’s current IP standards.