"Trans-Pacific Partnership Provisions in Intellectual Property, Transparency, and Investment Chapters Threaten Access to Medicines in the US and Elsewhere", 8 Mar 2016

A new Pacific-Rim trade agreement threatens future access to affordable medicines in the United States and abroad...One of the most contentious chapters in the TPP is the Intellectual Property (IP) Chapter [4], whose patent, undisclosed-test-or-other-data, and enforcement provisions could dramatically affect access to affordable medicines. Equally contentious is the Investment Chapter [5], in which protection of IP-related investments and investor-state-dispute settlement (ISDS) give drug companies powerful tools to protect monopolies on medicines. An annex to the Transparency Chapter [6] risks negatively impacting access to medicines because of increased applicant access to medical product listing decisions...