Makati City, 5 February 2007 - The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IP Philippines) joins various organizations in urging the House of Representatives to immediately pass House Bill 6035. The bill seeks to amend the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines to help improve access to quality and low cost medicines.

"We laud and support House Bill 6035 as well as Senate Bill 2263, which aim to amend provisions in the IP Code. We have been advocating these reforms in our patent system to make it more responsive to the demands of the times and answer the urgent needs of our people," Atty. Adrian S. Cristobal Jr., Director General of IP Philippines, said.

"Our recommendations are consistent with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which the country acceded to in 1994," Cristobal added. Under the TRIPS, the Philippines is allowed certain flexibilities such as parallel importation, government use of inventions, early working provision or the Bolar exception, among others. Most of these provisions have already been adopted by developing nations and developed countries.

Salient points in the proposed amendments to the IP Code (House Bill 6035) sponsored by Representative Junie Cua, chairman of the House Committee on Trade and Industry, are as follows:

• Strengthen the country's purchasing power through the principle of international exhaustion where lower priced medicines can be purchased from other countries without violating rights of patent owners in the Philippines;
  
  
• Ensure that generic equivalents are available in the market at an earlier time by allowing the use of the available data submitted to the regulatory authority and obtain marketing approval to manufacture the generic drugs or medicines before the expiration of a patented drug (Early working or Bolar exception);
  
  
• The government, through strengthened mechanisms such as compulsory licensing and government use, can obtain life-saving drugs in cases of emergencies such as a pandemic;
  
  
• The Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) shall identify the health measures necessary to respond to public health emergencies to ascertain that there are no delays in case of public emergencies;
  
  
• Exercise of parallel importation to buy medicines from any market where the patent owner has already made the product available by amending the trademark provisions.