[Ip-health] Inside U.S. Trade on WTO negotiations on LDC waiver for pharmaceutical products

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://insidetrade.com/week-trade/tpp-text-work-continues-amid-wh-push-ttip-miami-round-itc-sugar

Inside U.S. Trade

This Week In Trade

TPP Text Work Continues Amid WH Push; TTIP Miami Round; ITC Sugar

Posted: October 19, 2015



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Another top event on the Washington agenda is the annual Global Services
Summit on Wednesday, where U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and
Deputy USTR Michael Punke are slated to speak.

Punke's presence in Washington likely means there will be no work in Geneva
this week on the indefinite waiver requested by least-developed countries
(LDCs) from their obligations under the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) related to the protection for
pharmaceuticals, according to one informed source.

The TRIPS Council, which met last week, was supposed to reconvene on Monday
to discuss the issue, but that meeting was postponed, this source said.
Punke is the lead negotiator on the TRIPS waiver for the U.S., which has
rejected the LDC's proposal for an indefinite waiver that would apply until
they graduate from LDC status and instead proposed a 10-year extension.

Public Citizen, Oxfam, and Knowledge Ecology International and three other
non-governmental organizations urged President Obama in a letter sent
Monday to accept the LDC proposal, calling the U.S. offer of a 10-year
waiver “meager” and the U.S. position “egregious.”