The Ethics of Counterfeit Medicine Within the World Trade Organisation – Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Right.

EasyChair Preprint 6364

Abstract

Generally, existing studies on the World Trade Organisation WTO- Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property right (TRIPS) revolves around access to medicine debate, exclusive licence, and technology transfer issues in developing countries by placing the protection of intellectual property within the free trade forum of the WTO. The WTO in a bid to link trade and IP within its organisation failed to recognize the ethics of counterfeit Pharmaceuticals. Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals is deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled concerning identity and source and can be said to be a direct consequence of free trade. The WTO failed to identify the moral consequence or amoral effect of counterfeit pharmaceuticals on public health. This paper seeks to examine the ethics of the protection guaranteed by the WTO by demonstrating how what is deemed ethical within the WTO-TRIPS like the protection of property rights is not ethical when counterfeit drugs are involved because a business does not concern itself about the ethics of drugs but on profit and protecting the right.

Keyphrases: Nigeria, Pharmaceuticals, WTO, ethics

@booklet{EasyChair:6364,
  author    = {Ifueko I. Imasuen},
  title     = {The Ethics of Counterfeit Medicine Within the World Trade Organisation – Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Right.},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6364},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}