Calling out South Korean IP theft on fifth anniversary of trade deal

Over the five years since the United States and South Korea entered into the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, or KORUS, our ally has repeatedly backstabbed American biopharmaceutical firms and undercut their intellectual property rights. Thankfully, top U.S. officials could soon level the playing field and defend American job-creators.

South Korea's efforts to weaken biopharmaceutical patents threaten our companies' ability to develop breakthrough medicines. Biopharmaceutical firms face long, costly, arduous research-and-development paths. It takes more than a decade and $2 billion to bring just one drug to market. Companies can't undertake the risk and expense of creating a viable new therapy without patents, which protect their drug design against copycats and thieves — including government thieves.

KORUS was supposed to protect American biopharmaceutical companies' intellectual property. But the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is now undermining the agreement.

The abuses are so severe that the U.S. pharmaceutical sector has asked the U.S. Trade Representative to place South Korea on its Special 301 watch list to pressure South Korea to comply with IP protections.

Here's how the Korean ministry is failing to comply. It exercises overly broad discretion on whether to add a new drug product to its official "Green" list, which offers comparatively stronger patent protections or demote a patent to a lower listing that offers fewer protections. This amounts to government rationing of patient access to newer, better medications. South Korea only covers about two-fifths of new medicines for cancer, the deadliest disease in that country. In the United States, more than four out of five new cancer drugs are reimbursed.