Drugmakers say Pacific trade pact to stifle investment in cures

"This term was not a random number, but the result of a long debate in Congress, which determined that this period of time captured the appropriate balance that stimulated research but gave access to biosimilars in a timely manner," John Castellani, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of PhRMA, said in an e-mailed statement.

Budget pressure

For many countries in the trade pact, the exclusivity period is longer than the one they currently enforce. That will pressure their budgets and may significantly reduce access to drugs, according to Ruth Lopert, a professor at George Washington University. She said as many as 40,000 people in Vietnam, the poorest country in the agreement, could stop getting drugs to fight HIV because of provisions that will boost the price of therapy.

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The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said the agreement will hurt patients and health care providers in developing countries.

"Although the text has improved over the initial demands, the TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies," said the group in a statement.

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Still, the agreement won't make much of a difference to biotechnology stocks, Eric Schmidt, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said before the pact was announced. With or without exclusivity, biotech intellectual property is pretty well protected, he said.

"I don't think this is a big deal for us," Schmidt said. "Biotech patents have historically been very long-lived, more durable than either eight or 12 years of government-granted exclusivity."

The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index rose less than 1 percent at 9:56 a.m. in New York.