THE IMPLICATION OF ETHIOPIA’S STRONG PATENT REGIME ON PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

In the pharmaceutical industry, the appropriate patent breadth and exceptions like effective compulsory license (CL) has direct key role by attracting investment to expedite the innovation, industrial and health policy goals. The success story of building vibrant domestic pharmaceutical industry in the current industrial nations and third world countries is by adopting generic drug policy, strong institutional alliance, lenient or process patent and workable CL regime that encourages copying, imitation and reverseengineering at their initial stage of development. The 1993 Ethiopia’s drug policy failed to prioritize generic as a default option, weak institutional collaboration and the patent breadth grant strong IPR protection as per Art 2(5) of the 1995 patent Pro No 123/1995 are major bottlenecks to build vibrant local pharmaceutical industry in the presence of massive brand drug patent protection. Besides, the current CL regime is not well designed and has flaws for the actual development of the industry. Ethiopia will accede the WTO in the near future and should therefore exploit the TRIPS Council decision on pharmaceuticals, transition period domestic policy space for LDCs until 2033, reform its strong patent laws in a way that can contribute to the development of thriving domestic pharmaceutical industry by adopting coherent health and industrial policy, create strong institutional collaboration, enact only process patent law and workable CL regime.