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Canada-EU trade deal will extend patents for two years

Generics/General | Posted 31/10/2013 0 Post your comment

On 18 October 2013, Canada and the European Union (EU) reached agreement on a trade deal, which will free the movement of goods, services, investment and labour between the two regions, but has been criticized by generics makers for delaying access to medicines.

Negotiations for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU were started in May 2009 and the content of CETA and its general modalities were agreed in June 2009. It is expected to be another 18 to 24 months before final Canadian and European approval is given.

The deal, although good news for Canada-EU trade, is not such good news for generics makers, due to changes in Canada’s patent protection laws that will come into effect as part of the deal. The deal will provide pharmaceutical companies with up to two extra years’ patent protection. A new right will also be established for patent-holders to appeal court decisions where a patent is declared invalid, a process that has only been available to challengers in Canada to date.

The Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association (CGPA) was pleased that the intellectual property provisions in CETA ‘fall short of the European Commission’s original unnecessary demands on behalf of brand-name drug companies’. However, the association ‘is disappointed by the inclusion of a patent term extension in CETA’, stating that the deal will ‘delay market entry of cost-saving generic prescription medicines in Canada in the future, increasing healthcare costs for provinces, employers that sponsor drug plans for their employees and Canadians who pay for their prescription medicines out-of-pocket’. The federal government, in an effort to allay any such fears, has suggested that local authorities may be able to claim compensation for any higher drug costs.

Canada grapples with drugs costs

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Source: CGPA, EC