The Bush administration has hinted that Israel's admittance to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a key target of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, is contingent on Israel's willingness to tighten its supervision of intellectual property rights.
In its "2007 Special 301 Report" published yesterday, the Office of the US Trade Representative said that "the US looks to Israel to provide a higher level of protection that reflects its status as a partner in the US - Israel FTA and its objective of becoming a member of the OECD."
Israeli sources told "Globes" yesterday that this statement would appear to imply that the Office of the US Trade Representative has decided to respond to pressure from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which has been consistently pressuring the administration to take punitive action, or at least increase the pressure on Israel for what it describes as a lack of adequate protection for the intellectual property rights of US ethical drug manufacturers operating in Israel.
The Office of the Trade Representative has kept Israel on its priority watch list along with 11 other countries: China, Russia, Chilea, Egypt, India, Lebanon, Thailand, Venezuela, Turkey and Ukraine.
"Israel appears to have left unchanged its intellectual property regime that results in inadequate protection against unfair commercial use of data generated to obtain marketing approval", it says in the 301 Report. "It also left unchanged aspects of its 2005 law that significantly reduced the term of pharmaceutical patent protection by reducing the time granted to compensate for delays in obtaining regulatory approval of a drug."
However, the Office of the Trade Representative also commended Israel for informing it of the steps it has taken to prevent the use of ethical drug companies' data which were submitted to the Ministry of Health, as a basis for obtaining licenses to export generic versions of ethical drugs. "This is a positive step towards addressing the US's concerns on this issue. However, the US remains concerned by the weak protections offered by Israel to pharmaceutical innovators," it added.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on May 1, 2007
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2007