While stronger intellectual-property laws help economies in rich and poor nations, access to medicine is another issue; CU economist has done groundbreaking work in both areas
In 2006, after testing positive for HIV and seeing her CD4 count drop to 159 (from a normal level of about 1,000), Penina Petro started on the road to better health with the help of the medications she received from Sekotoure Hospital, Tanzania, under Global HIV/AIDS Program funding. In 2001-02, CU Professor Keith Maskus helped launch a similar program while serving as lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Photo by U.S. Health Resources and Services Adminitration.
But while protecting intellectual property can drive economic growth, it can also thwart the protection of public health. That has been obvious in places such as Africa, where the incidence of AIDS far outstrips the availability—or the ability to purchase—the best pharmaceutical treatments.
Nine years ago, the public-health problems led Maskus to take a post with the World Bank, where he helped launch a program to provide desperately needed drugs in the developing world.
Maskus, who also serves as associate dean for social sciences at CU’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been deeply immersed in these issues for much of the past two decades. In September 2010, he summarized the trends in global intellectual-property protection as a keynote speaker at the World Trade Organization’s Public Forum.
In 1995, Maskus and political scientist Mohan Penubarti, then of the University of California at Los Angeles, wrote a widely cited paper making the case that increasing patent protection worldwide has a positive effect in both richer and poorer nations. The reason is that such protection increases trade and investment in high-technology goods, which diffuses new knowledge throughout the world.
It had generally been believed that stronger intellectual-property laws benefitted richer nations, while poorer nations benefitted from looser laws.
As Maskus notes, laws protecting intellectual property vary as much as the nations that enact them, though less-developed nations generally have less protection than do richer nations.
Maskus’ work supported the view of the United States and the European Community, which argued for stronger patent protections across the world. That view had driven the adoption of a major trade agreement in 1994, a pact called Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (or TRIPS).
The agreement, which sets minimum standards of patent protection, is binding on members of the World Trade Organization. Though there are minimum standards now, the strength of IP laws varies widely—from strict protection in the United States to much-less protection in India.
His credentials burnished by the 1995 work, Maskus took a position as lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank in 2001-2002. He focused on key questions such as access to essential medicines in developing nations. While there, he helped develop a medicines-procurement program for poor nations.
Before Maskus joined the bank, it was not making grants to pay for medicine purchase and delivery infrastructures. The medicine-procurement program was launched in 2002 with a budget of up to $150 million. At that time, most of the money was spent on anti-HIV drugs.
Since that time, there’s been a “sea change in attitudes” about ensuring access to critically needed medicine, Maskus notes, adding that the World Bank played a role in that shift.
Access to anti-viral medicines is now much better than it was, he notes. Though drugs in the developing world are subject to patent protection, governments may intervene to make sure prices are low.
The TRIPS agreement itself aims to protect private intellectual-property rights. “It was never envisioned by negotiators that these private rights would interfere with public goods,” such as medicine or environmental technology, Maskus says.
Though developing nations could, theoretically, produce patented drugs, they were not allowed to purchase generic versions of patented drugs. That was a problem in nations that did not have the facilities to produce the drugs.
The original TRIPS agreement barred the purchase of generic drugs under such circumstances, Maskus says. “So there were negotiations to relax that.”
Today, the U.N. World Health Organization buys medicines for the treatment of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. The Global Fund, a nonprofit organization, focuses on buying drugs for developing countries.
Patents in the developed world provide incentives for new development treatments of ailments that exist worldwide, Maskus says. Heart and liver problems, for instance, exist in both the developed and developing world.
“Despite what you might read about them, they’re not villains,” Maskus says of pharmaceutical companies.” They just want to make sure their own markets aren’t cannibalized.”
While working to control their own markets, pharmaceuticals do negotiate with the Global Fund and others to provide wide access to modern medicines.
Where the system works less efficiently, Maskus notes, is in the case of diseases that are largely confined to developing nations. There’s no economic incentive to develop new drugs for the undeveloped world, he adds.
Research and purchase of medicine for those geographically confined diseases has been funded by the Gates Foundation and the Global Fund.
Last year, Maskus was honored with an Alumni Achievement Award from Knox College in Illinois, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics in 1976. He told a writer for Knox College that he is perhaps most proud of his work with the World Bank to establish the fund to purchase and distribute HIV/AIDS drugs in very poor countries.
“Or it might be bungee jumping off a bridge in New Zealand and loving every minute of it,” he added.
Maskus is an expert on international trade, including foreign direct investment, intellectual property rights and the link between trade and technology transfer. He has been a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a fellow at the Kiel Institute for World Economics and a visiting professor at several international universities, including the University of Adelaide, the University of Bocconi, the University of Munich and Peking University.
Maskus also serves as a consultant for the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. He is the author of “Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy” and co-editor of “International Public Goods and the Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime.”
Additionally, Maskus has endowed a scholarship for the university’s new Washington, D.C., internship program, informally dubbed CU in DC. The Maskus Global Policy Scholars Fund, which gives preference to economics or political-science majors, is helping students experience the world of policy at the nation’s seat of power.
Read a Q&A with Keith Maskus by Knox College here. Maskus was recently honored with the college’s Alumni Achievement Award.
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