To examine whether corporate social responsibility could ameliorate access to medicine for the developing world?

Protection of Intellectual Property plays a major role in the field of drug making, as it prevents others to reproduce the findings of the researcher, while granting the scientist enough time to recoup the invested capital. The drawback of such a regulatory system is that, it creates incentives for creator to misuse the opportunities granted by the regulation. Such is the case for the current patent protection system agreed upon by the members of the WTO. The so-­‐ called TRIPS agreement has been introduced aiming to harmonize the patent legislation on a global scale. However, since the implementation of TRIPS there has been an ongoing debate about the effects of a global patent protection on the ability for developing countries to obtaining technology, while IP regulations could potentially raise the coasts of Pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals products. Furthermore, questions have been raised on the effect of the TRIPS Agreement on the generic medication, as TRIPS is applicable to all WTO members including to generic producing countries such as India and Brazil. Prior to TRIPS most of the countries only granted patents for the process of the drug and not the product it self. Fore the public health, this flexibility meant that countries could design IP rules for Pharmaceuticals according to their own needs, as long as the principle of the national treatment was respected. With the regulations of TRIPS, generic-­‐producing countries lost this edge making TRIPS one of the most criticized agreements between the member states, arguing that extensive IP standards would breach their development prospects as they where not armed to profit from the benefits from this standards. In a recent rapport by the Special Rapporteur to the UN, concerns have been raised on the effects of TRIPS on the needed price reduction on (essential) medicine desperately needed by the developing and least developing countries. 1 As the dominant force on the global medicine market, pharmaceutical companies have the social responsibility to make the access to medicine a corporate goal. It is not reasonable and also impossible to desire from an economical entity to leave profit maximization in order to improve the access to health care in general and access to medicine in particular. But it is reasonable to desire for the multinational entities more structural policy in the fight against lack of essential medicine in the world.