The world's poorest countries on Tuesday won more time to abide by global intellectual property rules such as trademarks and copyright, but a final deal on access to cheap medicines remained elusive.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreed at a meeting in Geneva to extend a deadline for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to get in line with international regulations, which had been due to expire on January 1 2006, until July 2013, trade officials said.
But they said there was no such progress on the drugs' issue. The WTO agreed two years ago to allow member countries under certain conditions to waive patents on medicines to let poorer nations import cheaper copied versions when facing health emergencies such as AIDS.
But the accord needs to be written into the WTO's treaty on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in a formal amendment, and it is here that problems have emerged.
States had been hoping to end the wrangling over medicines before a key ministerial conference next month in Hong Kong to avoid any risk of complicating the already difficult task of making progress in the WTO's troubled free trade talks.
"More time is going to be needed for consultations," a trade official quoted South Korean ambassador Choi Hyuck, who chairs the TRIPS negotiations, as telling a closed-door meeting.
Until a deal emerges, poorer countries can still use the waiver on drugs' patents agreed in 2003 to import from countries such as India, which produce cheaper generic copies of medicines whose patents are often held by big US or European firms.
Differences include calls by some African states to remove some of the red tape surrounding use of the waiver system.
Their demands have been echoed by several non-governmental organisations, which are urging developing states not to rush into agreeing the wording of the formal amendment and to seek to negotiate better terms for drugs' imports.
Because it must be used on a country-by-country, drug-by-drug basis, they say that it will not create the sort of large-scale market that gives the economies of scale needed to push down generic drugs' prices.
The conditions imposed were one reason why the waiver has so far not been used by any developing country, they add.
"Delaying the amendment ... does not jeopardise the August 30th (2003) decision, but it does ensure that the opportunity to improve the mechanisms remains an option," Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said in a statement.