Note: The Dominican Republic Senate passed the patent bill on April 18, 2000. The Chamber of Deputies passed the patent bill two weeks earlier. This legislation awaits President Fernandez Reyna's signature; once the President signs the patent bill, it becomes national law. The copyright bill which passed the Senate in November 1999, is still pending in the Chamber of Deputies.

PhRMA has urged the USTR GSP Subcommittee which reviews the Dominican Republic's eligibility for GSP benefits, "that benefits be suspended or withdrawn, in whole or in part, if the Dominican Republic does not improve its record on protection of patented pharmaceutical products. More specifically [PhRMA asks] that the GSP Committee move to withdraw GSP benefits from the Dominican Republic should the legislation under consideration be adopted without amendment (PhRMA GSP submission, March 16, 2000)."

The U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic has a campaign going on to try to modify the proposal of the goverment for a new intelectual property Law. This proposal was approved by the Senate on November and it is pending of aproval by the House of Representatives.

As you may imagine the proposal contains provisions that will assure the dominican patients acces to new drugs (cumpolsory licenses, Exhaust of Rigths, etc.) and this has trigger the critics of the Embassy. They have bring to the country so called experts on I.P. to question the proposed law, Doris Long, a professor from John Marshall School of Chicago, prepare a document to descredit the law. They use a foundation named Alexis de Tocquerville to elaborate another document in the same direction.

The Embassy has make it clear to the Dominican Republic that the benefits derivating from the Caribbean Basin Initiative (C.B.I.) and the S.G. P. and, more important than this, the Law that will give this country and others of the region the Parity with Mexico for the treatment of exports to the U.S. of textiles manufacturies will be lost if the proposed law is approved without modifications.