This paper will address the main threats of the intellectual property (IP) chapters in the bilateral and regional agreements with the United States of America (US) for access to medicines, give an overview of the reactions from different sectors to these agreements, and outline some strategic considerations for future action. The effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on access to medicines are of course only one area of concern. Others have documented concerns in other areas of intellectual property such as patenting of life forms, which has consequences for agriculture, software patenting to the detriment of open source developers, and the extension of copyright affecting education and libraries.
In addition, the intellectual property chapters of the FTAs cover only a relatively small area. Other areas of concern are the effects of FTAs on agriculture, competition policies, the environment, investment policies, labour and others.
The scope of this paper is however limited to the effects that IP provisions in FTAs have on access to medicines. In part, this is because the access to medicines case is rather well documented and has generated the largest amount of both empirical and analytical work on intellectual property and sustainable development issues. An examination of the effect of bilateral and regional FTAs on access to medicines may provide some insights, strategic considerations and lessons to the benefit of others who work on broader issues in relation to the FTAs, such as Food Security and Biodiversity. A recent example of thisis the Side-letter on Biodiversity that Peru obtained in its FTA with the US, an extension of the use of previous side-letters on Public Health.