For your information

Popped for pills The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which represents most of the major pharmaceutical corporations in America, has petitioned the United States Trade Representative to put Lebanon on the 2012 Priority Watch List. They have complained that there is a lack of adequate intellectual property protection in the Lebanese pharmaceutical market. While it was noted that the new industrial property law passed in 2000 represented a major step forward from the 1924 law, PhRMA claim it does not provide sufficient pipeline or transitional patent protection and gives an incomplete definition of confidential information. Another point of contention the US body raised was the ministry of public health’s failure to implement sound regulation practices to distinguish between innovative and generic medicines. The Ministry of Public Health was also mentioned for having failed to successfully crack down on parallel imports, which result in a ‘grey’ market of counterfeit