Archive - Jun 2006

Developing countries led by India and Brazil are set on a collision course with Washington by stepping up their campaign in the World Trade Organisation to oblige patent applicants to disclose the origin of inventions using biological resources or traditional knowledge.

A senior U.S. trade official said June 6 that the administration has come under 'some pressure' from the U.S. agriculture community to consider scaling back its domestic support proposal in the World Trade Organization negotiations in response to the European Union's failure to offer greater access to the European market.

Link to a new proposal by the African Group for modalities on agricultural commodities.

A number of recent studies have predicted losses for Africa from the Doha trade round, in the industrial sector, but also in agriculture. This is contrary to the conventional view that many African policy makers have.

This pamphlet

In an attempt to break the deadlock in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations on reaching full modalities by the end of June, Malaysian trade minister Rafidah Aziz yesterday offered a 'blueprint' that calls for accepting the Group-of-20 proposal as a 'basis to move negotiations forward' on the thresholds and cuts for tariff reduction, tariff reduction numbers and spending caps in the farm market access pillar (see related report this issue).

The Ministers of Health of ten South American countries have issued ajoint declaration on intellectual property committing themselves toavoid 'TRIPS plus' provisions in bilateral and regional trade agreements, to facilitate the use of compulsory licensing and parallel importing and to avoid broadening the scope of patentability and the extension of patentable areas.

After a negotiating process that lasted many days and that was closely watched by dozens of health and development NGOs, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution on 27 May that established a working group to come up with a global strategy on intellectual property, health research and development, and new medicines for diseases that especially affect developing countries.

The European Union plans to convene a stocktaking meeting of select trade ministers on the Doha Development Agenda services negotiations in an effort to better link the outcomes of the modalities negotiations in agriculture and nonagricultural market access with the important services sector, WTD has learned (WTD, 5/30/06).