Medicines entering from the EU will have five years of protection

After negotiations for a trade agreement with the European Union (EU), a decision was taken to allow a period of five years for the protection of European medicines entering Ecuador.

This protection does not apply to existing products in the market but only to new drugs.

Alfredo Corral, intellectual property expert, explained that this will establish that when creating a new product any other manufacturer, during that time, could not rely on the same data to develop a generic.

For agrochemicals entering Europe, the time will be 10 years

The Minister of Foreign Trade, Francisco Rivadeneira, said that this measure will take effect after seven years (two until the agreement comes into force provisionally and five additional).