In an unexpected move, the World Trade Organization (WTO) last week agreed that patent laws would not be used to prevent developing countries from using generic medicines to protect public health.

The trade-related aspects of intellectual property (TRIPS) agreement currently permits countries to license the production of cheaper copies of patented drugs where this is necessary on public-health grounds. But if the WTO had required all its members to recognize patents by 2006, as was originally planned, these rights could have fallen away.

The declaration agreed at the WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, on 14 November postpones this deadline to 2016 for least-developed countries, and states that the agreement should be implemented in a manner that is “supportive of WTO members' right to protect public health, and in particular to promote access to medicines for all”. The agreement was brokered by Brazil — which produces large quantities of generic drugs — and was unexpectedly backed by the United States in the face of opposition from the US pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, individual countries will be free to determine the circumstances under which licences to manufacture generics are issued. The Doha declaration acknowledges that these are not confined to emergency situations — but if countries declare an emergency they can issue compulsory licences without prior negotiation with the patent owner.

The loosely worded TRIPS agreement has been open to different interpretations in the past, leading to threats of trade sanctions and legal actions of the kind that the South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association brought against its government earlier this year for enacting legislation which it claimed threatened intellectual property rights (see Nature 410, 1013; 2001). Mark Heywood, national secretary of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign, hails the new agreement as “a step in the right direction” that should prevent such actions in future.

“Doha sends a strong message that people's health overrides the interests of big drug companies,” agrees Michael Bailey, senior policy adviser to the charity Oxfam. But problems will remain for countries that lack a generic drugs industry, and therefore cannot obtain drugs by issuing a compulsory licence.