Browsing by Subject "competition law"

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    Promoting public health using competition law: applying the essential facilities doctrine to increase access to drugs in South Africa
    (2009) Ntambirweki, Barbara; Davis, Judge Dennis
    The impact and nature of HIV/ AIDS pandemic epitomizes the greatest threat to public health and the most important challenge facing South Africa today. In 2007, it was estimated that more than five million people are living with HIV/ AIDS in South Africa which represents the highest number of sufferers in any country in the world. It is likely that close to 400,000 South Africans die of the disease each year. Despite this reality, the government for sometime was reluctant to deal with urgency and commitment required by the epidemic. After many years of controversy with civil society, the government fina11y adopted a new National HIV/ AIDS & STI Strategic Plan for South Africa 2007-11 (NSP). The primary aims of the NSP is to reduce the rate HIV infections by 50% by 2011 and reduce the impact of AIDS by expanding access to appropriate treatment care and support to 80% of those in need by 2011. The four priority areas of NSP include prevention, treatment, care, support; research monitoring and surveillance. Inspite of the efforts by the South African government, a number of obstacles continue to hinder the realization of access to affordable health treatment. One of the major causes for the overwhelming low rate of access is drug prices6. The drug prices are set by pharmaceutical companies that have invested money into research and development that leads to medical discoveries.In order to recover research and development expenditures, the pharmaceutical companies patent their ideas to exclude other manufacturers from cheaply producing and profiting from their inventions. Therefore, international trade regimes seek to guarantee that certain minimum standards are adopted for protection of intellectual property rights. Thus pharmaceutical patents as a major impediment to accessing affordable medicine will be discussed below.
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    Open Access
    Resale price maintenance in South African competition law
    (2011) Spangler, Simon; Kelly, Luke; Davis, Dennis
    Resale Price Maintenance (‘RPM') refers to a particular type of vertical agreement in which an upstream firm controls or restricts the price at which a downstream firm can on-sell its product or service, typically to final consumers.1 Usually the parties agree to set either a minimum or maximum resale price. Maximum RPM covers those situations in which an upper limit or ceiling is placed on the price the retailer can charge for a product. In contrast, when it comes to minimum RPM, a lower bound or floor is placed on the price at which the retailer can on-sell the product.2 Fixing the minimum resale price is generally treated more strictly by competition law as it is considered to have more severe anti-competitive effects, for example the elimination or reduction of intra-brand competition and an increase in price transparency that might facilitate horizontal collusion upstream or downstream.