Patent Games in the Global South

[T]his book is an original masterpiece that could be relied upon by a cross-section of students, scholars, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, professionals, and other stakeholders interested in the imperative but mostly esoteric and multifaceted matters of pharmaceutical patent law-making. -- Titilayo Adebola, University of Aberdeen * Journal of International Economic Law * An ambitious and insightful contribution. -- Rahul Bajaj, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi, India * Modern Law Review * Patent Games in the Global South is an important book because it provides empirical support to voices questioning the wisdom and equity of imposing Western-style IP regimes in developing countries … What is more, it analyses what is needed to improve the situation, and gives concrete examples of how TRIPs flexibilities might be operationalized to best serve a country's interests … an impressive achievement that no scholar or policy maker in the area of patent law and access to health can afford to overlook. -- Léon Dijkman * The IPKat * This is an exciting book. It is based on fieldwork in Brazil, India and Nigeria, three countries of major importance to how we think about the complexities of patents and access to medicines. It also develops fresh theoretical insights through a synthesis of critical legal theory and nodal governance. Intellectual property law is shown to be an arena that has to be contested by citizens and social movements if it is ever to serve their interests. This is a hugely important book. * Peter Drahos, European University Institute, Fiesole * This is a powerful, refreshing and welcome book. Written from a critical global south/TWAIL perspective, it uncovers and insightfully traces bottom up resistance against hegemonic and inequitable global north intellectual property regimes. Using evidence of significant deviations in patent law, policy and doctrine from India and Brazil, it shows how the global south is charting alternative approaches to those prescribed in global intellectual property norms. For international and comparative law scholars, this book sets a new standard that foregrounds resistance and reform as a lens for understanding legal transplantation. In so doing, the book convincingly overturns the traditional understanding of transplantation as mere imitation or imposition of alien rules. Instead, it foregrounds how transplanted or imposed laws are actively and successfully subverted and reformed through bottom-up resistance. It also draws lessons from these experiences for other global south countries like Nigeria. * James Thuo Gathii, Wing Tat Lee Chair of International Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law * Patent Games in the Global South considers patent law making in Brazil, India and Nigeria, through the triple lens of history, national politics and international politics with a spotlight on the role of multiple stakeholders. Stakeholder views were elicited through multi-sited ethnography and incorporated into the analysis which was informed by Critical Legal Theory and Third World Approaches to International Law. It is a thought provoking treatise and a worthy addition to scholarship on the critically important subject of patents and access to medicines in the global South. * Caroline B Ncube, SARChI Research Chair in Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development and Professor at the Department of Commercial Law, University of Cape Town * From a Global South, bottom-up perspective, patent law is not only a field in which a series of crucially important disputes about the present and future ownership of knowledge are taking place. It is also a key component of a large assemblage known as global governance, which started with the European colonial project and which continues to shape our lives today via WTO and other international rules and a myriad of domestic regulations. Amaka Vanni takes up the challenge in this wonderful book of showing the impact of this complex history in relation to pharmaceuticals and the countless battles that are currently being fought to overcome its effects in Brazil, India and Nigeria. Anyone interested in the multiple ways in which global history is woven into the fabric of the international legal order and, in turn, into the bodies – healthy and troubled - of Southern subjects, must start with Patent Games in the Global South. * Luis Eslava, Reader in International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL), University of Kent *