NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, January 17, 2014

Global drug firms may threaten to cut their South African investments as part of a campaign against Pretoria’s plans to overhaul its intellectual property laws to favour generic production, documents seen by Reuters show.

South Africa is in the final stages of implementing a new law that would allow generic drugmakers to produce cut-price copies of patented medicines and generally make it harder to register and roll-over pharmaceutical patents.

The planned reforms will also close a loophole known as “ever-greening” that allows a drugmaker to make minor changes to an existing drug or discover a new use for it, and then register it as a totally new find.