Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
JVnet Forum posting** - April 20, 2004
Ngoc and Trang
A WHO expert explained: to understand about ARV patent protection, one needs knowledge in two areas:
(a) the patent status of each of the ARV drugs, and (b) legal documents relevant to patent protection.
The task of finding out the patent status of an ARV drug is possible, but quite complicated. A patent can be granted to a product, or to a production process by which this product is manufactured. There may be a patent for a drug's main active ingredient, a patent for a non-active ingredient, and there may even be a patent for a form of the drug (tablet, capsule, powder or syrup), etc. One drug may thus have multiple patents.
Fortunately, a lawyer group is currently working with the National Office of Industrial Property to do a search on patents granted in Viet Nam, seeking to understand the patent status of each of the ARV drugs, specifically whether the drug is under patent protection, what the patent(s) is for, and for how long, etc. The Ford Foundation expects the results of this work in May. There will then be clear information about the different ARVs' patent status.
As for the legal documents relevant to patent protection, there are many. The WHO expert said that we need to pay much attention to three types of documents:
- TRIPS Agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
- Bilateral trade agreements (BTAs) (especially the US-VN BTA), and
- Viet Nam' legal documents related to patent protection.
In the next couple of messages, we will try to give a brief introduction to these documents.
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** JVnet, an email forum in Vietnam, was founded by Dr. Jamie Uhrig, currently moderated by Institute for Social Development Studies.
To post message on JVnet: send to jvnet@netnam.vn
040420
JV040404
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