JAMA
October 20, 2015, Vol 314, No. 15
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/issue.aspx

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and Implications for Access to Essential Medicines
Jing Luo, MD; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH
[Initial text]
This Viewpoint discusses the importance of patent protection and its role in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement.

After a difficult legislative battle, President Obama signed into law Trade Promotion Authority on June 29, 2015. The legislation allows for an up-or-down vote with no amendments in Congress for international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The TPP Agreement includes 12 Asia-Pacific countries (United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand) with a collective trading power amounting to 40% of the global gross domestic product. The TPP Agreement is still being negotiated; recently, in a meeting of trade ministers in Maui, Hawaii, negotiators failed to finalize the text of the Agreement due in large part to disagreement regarding intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical products.1