Challenges to fair access to vaccines and medicines in the TRIPS Agreement with a view to Iranian Law (Example under review: Corona vaccine)

• Published in: پژوهشنامه حقوق تطبیقی Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 65 - 47
• Main Author: Omolbanin Ramzanzadeh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Mazandaran 01.03.2024
• Subjects: agreement; compulsory license; corona; covid -19; right of access to medicine; trips
• ISSN: 2423-7566
• DOI: 10.22080/lps.2023.24951.1465

After Prevalence of Corona, the limitations of TRIPS have been revealed, because the approach of TRIPS on one hand is to support the intellectual property aspects of the vaccine and drugs, and on the other hand, the flexibilities of TRIPS are not enough to ensure fair access to pharmaceutical products. This article examines the unique challenges that have come to the fore due to the Corona pandemic, and finally, examines some of the options that have been presented so far to facilitate equitable access to COVID-19 pharmaceutical products and technologies and shows that the voluntary licensing system mentioned in TRIPS, which is a tool to access affordable medicines, is time consuming and as such needs reform. Therefore, in order to deal with Covid-19 or emerging diseases, In the fields related to public health, countries should take steps in facilitating issuing licenses through establishing mandatory patent pools or to procure vaccine and drugs via already existing commercial, political, economic, or regional groupings now. In Iran's legal system, Article 17 of the Law on Patents, Industrial Designs and Trademarks mentions the issue of issuing compulsory exploitation licenses under certain conditions. Although the approval of this law is another step in the direction of smoothing the path of Iran's accession to the World Trade Organization, the objections to TRIPS also apply to this law.