CARACAS:PRESIDENT HUGO Chavez has vowed to shake up the rules governing intellectual property rights on medicines and other products in Venezuela - the socialist's latest move against the private sector.
"A song is intellectual property, but an invention or a scientific discovery should be knowledge for the world, especially medicine," Chavez said at the end of last month. "That a laboratory does not allow us to make a medicine because they have the patent, no, no, no," he said.
Chavez, who has nationalised many Venezuelan industries and is critical of the private sector, ordered his trade minister to analyse patent rules in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nation.
"Patents have become a barrier to production, and we cannot allow them to be barriers to medicine, to life, to agriculture," said the minister, Eduardo Saman, who previously headed Venezuela's patent agency.
"We are revising all the doctrines and laws related to patents, which should be compatible with the international treaties that we have signed and respect and honour."
Chavez recently criticised Swedish packaging maker Tetra Pak, saying its patents on cartons were limiting production in Venezuela.
- Reuters
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