The two public consultations on the Draft National Policy on Intellectual Property, 2013, run by the TAC, MSF and SECTION27 in Cape Town and Johannesburg on September 27th, led to the following general conclusions:
–Participants were happy about the direction of the policy and felt reforms could bring down prices, but wanted further details on how it will be implemented and what the cost will be—how the govt. will direct funds to ensure needed reform happens, and make sure it is done well.
–Strong support for substantive examination system and thoughts that the policy should state that the recommended cost-benefit analysis will be used to find a way to make examination a reality. For example, charging more for patent application fees, like India has done, could make a patents office’s examination system financially viable. General consensus was that Cabinet should implement patent examination ASAP, and set time-bound deadlines for meeting various objectives. If there is some kind of phased-in system for examination (e.g. some types of patents are examined first to test the system before scaling up to all patents), it must ensure that medicines and other fields that have an impact on public interest are prioritised.
–Agreement on the need for strict patentability criteria to ensure SA is able to curb evergreening practices by the pharmaceutical industry. A broad understanding that stricter IP does necessarily lead to new innovation, in fact it can reduce real innovation in favour of incremental innovation or evergreening practices.
–Outrage over the fact that Novartis and Cipla charge more for the same product (imatinib) here compared to India, and on Novartis’ massive return on investment globally for imatinib, while the company continues to charge high prices. Participants want the government to take steps to demand greater transparency from companies on R&D costs (how the costs are divided between public and private funding sources) and manufacturing costs. Things funded mostly with public money should not be unaffordable when they reach patients. Also, if companies are making so much money, we should not hesitate to use compulsory licenses.
–Strong support for opposition procedures (pre- and post-) to be put in place, from any third party—sense that this is activism civil society can rally around. Clarification in the policy is needed of who is eligible to oppose patents, and what are the procedures. Data on patents should be available to public without restriction
–Lots of discussion on local manufacturing capacity—why are we so reliant on other countries for our generic medicines? How can we build up our own capacity to also improve SA business, and can the DTI describe this in more detail in the policy? Can we learn from other BRICS on how to develop manufacturing capacity, and get advice on this and other patent law reforms?
–Strong feelings that the policy should be made more accessible to the general population so they understand how policy has an impact on them – and a call for greater community involvement in policies and processes that profoundly impact upon people’s lives.
Feedback from the public consultations will be incorporated into the joint submission being developed by TAC, MSF and SECTION27. The submission will be delivered to the Dept. of Trade and Industry in Pretoria on October 17th. Other organisations, as well as experts both inside and outside of South Africa, will be able to show international solidarity in supporting proposed reforms by endorsing the contents of the TAC/MSF/S27 joint submission and an international civil society letter.
Follow www.fixthepatentlaws.org for further details.