Abstract

• The idea of protecting the pharmaceutical products including medicine under patent system of intellectual property law is designed to provide reward for the production industry and also to give incentive for further innovative and research. However, this will often put burden for some countries where the patented essential medicines are high price and out of reach for the poor. To encounter public health needs, changes were made in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) by providing more flexibility to the poorer countries and to increase the safeguards that countries could use remaining within TRIPS obligations to improve public health care. This paper will aim to analyze these flexibilities provided by the TRIPS Agreements for the WTO member States to encounter public health crises in the countries where no or limited local production capacity for essential medicine.