ABSTRACT
The pharmaceutical industry is truly global in scale and scope. Virtually every major producer in the industry is transnational in its production and marketing operations, and many operate internationally in research and development. Pharmaceutical firms possess considerable market power to restrict the supplies and to raise the prices of their most important commodities in the pursuit of economic rent. This chapter discusses the global, class-based contradictions surrounding the application of the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement to pharmaceuticals production and trade. It serves as a case study of the TRIPS and the limits of coercive and consensual hegemony in the contemporary world capitalist system. Several facts regarding the global pharmaceutical industry’s dominance by a handful of large transnational corporations operate against the health and welfare of the world’s poor majorities.
