Europe’s pharma firms demand stronger IP protection

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has called upon the EU to significantly strengthen provisions in free-trade agreements (FTAs) to strengthen intellectual property (IP) protection for European firms.

The federation said wordings in agreements need to be strengthened and the EU needs to enforce FTA agreements with more gusto to protect European business and help regain Europe’s leadership position in global innovation.

The European pharma lobbying group also calls on the EU to make IP work better for SMEs, support partner countries to enforce IP better and extend the global coverage of EU FTAs.

“The EU should strengthen IP provisions in EU FTAs to the level of protection provided for in EU law, especially, but not only, with developed countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Chile). The EU has the opportunity to deepen FTAs and strengthen IP after several years, when FTAs are ‘upgraded’ to the benefit of EU member states’ and trading partner economies,” stated the federation.

“Mirroring the EU IP system in EU FTAs was the ambition in 2006 of the ‘Global Europe’ strategy. If the EU would refocus on this objective, the EU economy and its citizens would benefit in various ways: economically (e.g. higher levels of welfare, investments and exports), socially (e.g. higher wages, more high-quality export jobs), environmentally (e.g. support for biodiversity, green technologies), and in terms of recapturing part of the EU’s former global leadership in innovation, and via stronger resilience for the EU economy,” it added.

The EFPIA said the EU is already including “strong provisions” in its FTAs for geographical indications (GIs), plant variety rights (PVRs) and – depending on the trade partners – traditional knowledge.

But the federation argued that the EU should include stronger provisions on two large types of IP: trademarks and patents.

“For these two types, the EU should agree provisions in line with those provided for in EU law. Currently, EU FTAs are weaker in these two types of IP than other FTAs, notably US FTAs, while these two types of IP are among the most important for the EU and EU member state economies. The current levels of trademark and patent protection constitute the largest untapped potential of EU FTAs. The EU should lift the level of patent and trademark protection to what is already done on GIs,” it said.

On trademarks, the EFPIA said the EU could include provisions in its FTAs that would allow for the refusal or invalidation of a trademark on the grounds of bad faith, to disincentivise bad faith registrations by local companies infringing foreign trademarks.

The EU also needs to strengthen IP in EU FTAs via more emphasis on enforcement of its FTAs, including IP provisions, said the federation.

“Trading partners should not be allowed to circumvent FTA provisions by adopting mitigating domestic policies that undo the effect of the FTA after the FTA has been applied,” it said.