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# Canada Should Curb U.S. Drug Patents in Trade War: Professor
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/canada-should-curb-u-s-drug-patents-in-trade-war-professor/
- Published: 2018-06-18T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T00:13:53.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5141702

University of Ottawa law professor **Amir Attaran** has suggested that the Canadian government should look at suspending U.S. drug patents as the Trump Administration turns up the heat on its trade dispute with Canada. The U.S. holds more pharmaceutical patents and other intellectual property licenses than any other country, Attaran says in a *Macleans* [opinion piece](https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-pharmaceuticals-could-be-the-prescription-for-trade-warfare-that-truly-hurts-america/?ref=fdaweb.com). “Any trade retaliation aimed at pharmaceuticals certainly will be felt on Wall Street and heard in the White House,” he writes.

Attaran notes that Canada has experience in playing games with American drug patents and “expropriated pharmaceutical patents in the past: The federal government did so hundreds of times in the 1970s and 1980s, but stopped because of the 1988 *Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement*, which later inspired NAFTA. Now that the White House wants to back out of our trading relations and NAFTA too, it is fair to revisit that decision.”

Newer rules by the World Trade Organization could allow Canada’s government to authorize Canadian companies to copy patented drugs controlled by U.S. companies. The WHO rules offer procedural steps to counter certain anti-competitive behavior — “likely an easy determination for President Trump’s bogus claim that aluminum and steel tariffs are needed for national security,” Attaran says. “Once granted, a compulsory license leaves Canadian firms with the right to copy, sell, and potentially export the targeted drug, at the expense of a U.S. firm who is compensated only pennies on the dollar for the lost value of its patent monopoly. The White House would be left furious by Canada’s decision, but it would be without legal recourse.”

Such a move could turn the drug industry against the Trump Administration, according to Attaran. “From a domestic policy angle, it would mean billions of dollars of savings for Canada’s publicly-funded Medicare system,” he writes. “And most importantly, diplomatically, it would mean unleashing the most powerful industrial lobby in Washington to beat up the White House on our behalf.”