System needed for registration of drug patents
By Sadiq A. Salam
17 November 2006
RAS AL KHAIMAH — A top UAE corporate leader has urged the Ministry of Health (MoH) to lay down a law for registration of medicine patents in the country.
Speaking to mediapersons on the sidelines of the fourth Arab European Pharma Seminar, organised by the Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries Company (Julphar), Abdul Razzaq Yousif, Juphar CEO, said, "The new system should answer questions like who has the right to register patents, where and how to do that on the national level, etc."
Commenting on the current scenario in the country, Yousif said, "It's a grey zone because we don't have definite procedures for registering patents that can help locals."
"The ministerial decree, issued by the minister of health in 2000, stands short of specifying clear cut procedures for registration and protection of intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical sector," he said.
"This paves the way for foreign companies to compete with us strongly in the local markets and shut the door on us if we want to do the same in overseas markets."
Acting on a complaint filed by a leading international medicines producer, a few years ago, the MoH banned Julphar from producing 4M6, an aphrodisiac drug.
"This is a simple example of how foreign contenders take advantage of the loophole in our legal system by not having a definite patent registration and protection law," he said.
According to the Paris Club system, of which the UAE is a signatory member, any company that registers one of its products with any of the club's members, it is automatically endorsed in all the member states.
However, "the producer loses this right if it fails to register the product with any of the convention members within one year from the registration date", he said.
"This is not applicable in the UAE because we don't have this registration system. This is what we call the grey zone which lets the door open for foreign companies to compete with us in our local markets," he said.
For the time being, pharmaceutical industries in the UAE register their products in the US and European countries. "Julphar has around 17 products registered in the US currently," he said.
