ATLANTA: Pacific trading partners remained deadlocked over protections for next-generation medicines on Saturday after a long night of negotiations, potentially extending talks on a sweeping trade pact into a fifth day, sources close to the talks said.

Some delegates involved in talks on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will create a free trade zone covering 40 per cent of the world economy, were looking to re-book flights for Sunday in preparation for another day of negotiations.

“It’s very probable,” one official said of the chance that talks would stretch into Sunday. Another said the timeline was not yet clear, with negotiations going down to the wire over intellectual property protections on biological drugs.

Trade ministers, most of whom arrived in the southern US city of Atlanta on Wednesday, had initially hoped to wrap up talks by Thursday. A push by the United States to set a longer period of exclusivity for drug makers who develop biological drugs like Genentech’s Avastin cancer-treatment has run into opposition from other TPP economies.

The United States allows pharmaceutical companies an exclusive period of 12 years to use clinical data behind the approval for a new biological drug.

The Obama administration had previously proposed lowering that threshold to seven years but has pushed a proposal for an eight-year minimum in the TPP talks in Atlanta.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play