infoJustice

Eli Lilly’s challenge of Canadian judicial decisions under NAFTA’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is leading to concerns about ISDS in other trade negotiations. The company alleges that Canada violated its NAFTA obligation to grant patents on any inventions that “are new, result from an inventive step and are capable of industrial application” when courts found Eli Lilly’s drugs to fall short of Canadian utility standards.  

Today, over 270 health professionals in New Zealand wrote Prime Minister John Key, warning that the Trans Pacific Partnership “threatens the future of health in NZ, by elevating ‘investor rights’ of transnational corporations over the right of the New Zealand people to develop, adapt or improve domestic regulatory policies according to changing health needs…  For example,
the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is currently bringing a case against the Canadian government for $500 million Canadian dollars in response to a  patent ruling made in a Canadian federal court, which found that  Eli Lilly had not satisfied Canada’s domestic legal requirements.”

Last week, Canada and the European Union had hoped to finalize their Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which they have been negotiating since 2009, but failed to do so.  Inside U.S. Trade reports that one of the “biggest obstacle to concluding a deal in time for the May 7 bilateral meeting was Canada’s request to exclude certain intellectual property (IP) policies from the scope of an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which the EU strongly opposes.”  Canada’s negotiating position is clearly influenced by its defensive position in the current Eli Lilly dispute.