Patents for pharmaceuticals and access to affordable medicines: towards an all-encompassing access paradigm for Africa
The connection between patents for pharmaceuticals and access to affordable medicines has elicited considerable attention and highly stimulating debates since the emergence of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) as part of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing WTO in 1994. The TRIPS Agreement is the first international convention to make it mandatory for all countries to make patents available in all fields of technology provided the invention to be patented meets the criteria for patentability. Consequently, countries like India, Brazil, China and Thailand that used to refuse to grant patents for pharmaceuticals were constrained to amend their patents laws to bring them in line with the WTO standard. Many developing countries did not even have legislation for a number of the intellectual property rights areas covered by the agreement at the time it was adopted. The TRIPS Agreement has been criticised as being a significant part of the global access to medicines problem and strong arguments have been raised for having more flexible standards for the protection of patents particularly in relation to pharmaceuticals. 
This thesis examines the WTO regime for patent protection in the context of pharmaceuticals and the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement that countries seeking access to affordable patented pharmaceutical products might adopt. The effectiveness of the TRIPS compulsory licensing regime is examined, with particular focus on the limitations resulting from the TRIPS requirements for test data protection. The concepts of parallel importation and exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights are also examined with aview to ascertaining the extent to which they may serve as legal stratagems for developing countries seeking access to affordable medicines. The thesis argues that the existing frameworks for the right to health and the right to development in international law may provide a strong justification for the broad interpretation of the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement without the need for going through the very rigorous process of amending it. The thesis considers the patents and access to medicines problem in the context of the special and highly complex challenges people in Sub-Sahara Africa are currently encountering. It recommends the establishment of an African Free Trade Area to make it easier for Africa as a continent to make better use of the TRIPS flexibilities. The thesis argues that more than ever before, the time has come for Africa to harness her resources to address her access to medicines problem through the use of all the available options in international economic law and international human rights law.
The Health Impact Fund: Better Pharmaceutical Innovations at Much Lower Prices
Thomas Pogge contends that pricing advanced medicines beyond the reach of the poor and encouraging neglect of diseases concentrated among them, the TRIPS Agreement is responsible for avoidable death and disease on a massive scale. Pharmaceutical patents as globalised through the TRIPS Agreement cannot be defended by appeal to natural rights. Nor can they be justified in terms of mutual benefit or usefulness, because the global poor are deprived of their freedom to buy medicines at competitive prices yet often cannot benefit from the enhanced arsenal of advanced medicines. One way of mitigating the injustice involves creation of the Health Impact Fund (HIF), an international agency that would provide a standing option to register any new medicine for health impact rewards. By registering, a firm would agree to sell its product globally at a price fixed by the HIF at the lowest feasible cost of production and distribution. In exchange, the firm would receive for a fixed time payments based on this product’s assessed global health impact. If adequately funded, the HIF would serve as a complement to the patent regime by alleviating its deficiencies. In particular, the HIF would generate a stream of pharmaceutical innovations that would be cheaply available to all and would end the systemic research neglect of diseases concentrated among the poor.
MT and the Swiss language service providers: an analysis and training perspective
Switzerland is perceived as a highly multilingual country, with four national languages and a solid translation tradition in official, administrative and corporate settings, now even extended to include English. A research case study was set up to investigate the understanding and use of translation and language technologies by Swiss language service providers. This paper highlights some findings, particularly focusing upon the issue of translation automation processes in multilingual documentation production, with a view not only to spot preconceptions or knowledge gaps about MT, but also to 
suggest some training principles. We will argue that training activities ought to present MT systems as 
key aiding components of translator workbenches and, their output, as a valid linguistic resource for further human refining, if necessary. Moreover, in line with the idea that MT can be part and parcel of multilingual content production cycles, we will look at the interaction of MT with controlled language, CAT tools and terminology work. In sum, we will make explicit the usefulness of MT against the 
widespread prejudice that investing in MT does not return any benefits given the ‘low and hilarious quality of its output’, as quoted by most of the interviewees of our case study.