MSF slams UK's 'disastrous' IP proposal in UK-India FTA

According to the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), negotiations between the UK and India on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) were formally launched in January 2022 and are currently accelerating, with high-level meetings between the two governments scheduled this November on the side-lines of the G20 Summit in Indonesia, according to reports.

The demands of the UK in the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the FTA have been leaked by bilaterals.org, MSF stated, adding that the leaked chapter contains harmful IP provisions that go beyond what is required by international trade rules through the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement).

MSF is concerned that these “TRIPS-plus” provisions could undermine India’s robust pro-public health safeguards by requiring the country to change its national IP and drug approval laws to introduce more monopolies on medicines. This, in turn, could have a detrimental effect on the sustainable production, registration and supply of affordable, quality-assured generic medicines from India, upon which millions of people around the world rely. MSF therefore calls on the UK and Indian governments to remove these proposals including such TRIPS-plus provisions from the UK-India FTA negotiation.