Parallel Import Legal Issues Research

The health problems have become more and more serious all over the world due to the wide spread of communicable diseases. According to the2009Global AIDS Epidemic Report issued by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization, there were more than33.4million AIDS infected patients around the world and2million people died from diseases relating to AIDS. According to relevant statistics, the world’s75%population consist of people from developing countries who only own less than10%shares of the world’s medicine market.33%people are unable to obtain the most basic medicines and in Africa and some other poorest countries in Asia, even half. Medicine’s availability becomes more important in the background that it differs a lot between the developing countries and the developed countries whilst the integration of the world economy is already an irrevocable trend.Since the medicine’s healing properties are always associated with social welfare, the pharmaceutical parallel import is not an issue limited in the scope of intellectual property right. In the world trading system, the pharmaceutical parallel import is always an controversial problem. The developed countries made little compromise in recent years by approval of compulsory licensing production or parallel import where the world health crisis explodes.The article first introduced the definitions of medicines and pharmaceutical parallel import. Secondly an analysis of the reasons for pharmaceutical parallel import’s appearance was made. By combining the exhaustion principle, the article explained the legal basis of pharmaceutical parallel import by analyzing the TRIPs Agreement.Followed is a presentation of the legislation and current market status of the representative countries where Pharmaceutical parallel import was carried out well.Given their respective economic situation and the status of medicine industry, the article analyzed the influence that the Pharmaceutical parallel import has on the national economy and social welfare.The final part of the article is a general conclusion of our country’s legislation regarding the Pharmaceutical parallel import and some suggestions on how to take advantage of Pharmaceutical parallel import to cope with public health in our country. The article considers it feasible to allow Pharmaceutical parallel import provided that TRIPs Agreement was well observed by the member countries. Meanwhile, attention should be paid to purpose of public health protection during the process of revision or formulation of our country’s Pharmaceutical patent law while necessary measures shall be taken to prevent the misuse of Pharmaceutical parallel import.