President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has registered in the Verkhovna Rada a bill on adopting the protocol on amendments to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) with respect to flexible mechanisms of compulsory licensing that could be used by WTO members for production and exports of pharmaceuticals, ensuring their availability to consumers (No. 0079).

According to the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, which developed the document, the possibility of using such mechanisms, especially in the countries with insufficient or non-available manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector, was foreseen by the declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, the provisions of which were implemented and legally specified in the protocol.

"The entry into force of the protocol will allow WTO members to avoid problems associated with the need to protect patents for relevant pharmaceutical products in accordance with the relevant requirements of the TRIPS Agreement," the ministry said.

In particular, these changes in the TRIPS agreement will provide a legal opportunity to export pharmaceutical products made under compulsory licenses to the countries that have no own facilities for their production or their production capacity cannot meet the demand.