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   States was the first government in the world to share its patents with the Medicines Patent Pool, an independent foundation hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The United States hopes that additional public and private patent holders will explore voluntary licenses with the Medicines Patent Pool as one of many innovative ways to help improve the availability of medicines in developing countries. The patents that the United States shared were related to protease inhibitor medicines, primarily used to treat drug-resistant HIV infections. In addition, the United States, Brazil, and South Africa are providers in the WIPO Re:Search Consortium, a voluntary mechanism for making IPR and know how available on mutually agreed terms and conditions to the global health research community to find cures or treatments for neglected tropical diseases, and for malaria and tuberculosis. Other countries have joined as supporters.

Finally, another best practice is the active participation of government officials in capacity building efforts and in training. As further explained in Annex 2, the United States encourages foreign governments to make training opportunities available to their officials, and it actively engages with its trading partners in capacity building efforts both in the United States and abroad. 

Initiatives to Strengthen IPR Protection and Enforcement Internationally

The United States works to promote adequate and effective protection and enforcement of IPR through the following mechanisms.

 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a key initiative through which the United States seeks to advance multifaceted U.S. trade and investment interests in the Asia-Pacific region by negotiating an ambitious, 21st-century regional trade agreement along with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, in addition to Japan, which joined negotiations in 2013. The TPP negotiations are being undertaken with this group of like-minded countries with the goal of creating a platform for integration across the region, including strong standards for the protection and enforcement of IPR and for addressing emerging issues in the 21st century.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP): On March 20, 2013, the USTR notified the U.S. Congress of the President's intent to enter into negotiations for a comprehensive trade and investment agreement with the EU. Since that notification, the United States and the EU have held four rounds of negotiations, most recently during the week of March 10, 2014. With respect to IPR, the United States and the EU provide among the highest levels of IPR protection and the most robust IPR enforcement in the world. In T-TIP, the United States is pursuing a targeted approach on IPR that will reflect the shared U.S.-EU objective of high-level IPR protection and enforcement, and sustained and enhanced joint leadership on IPR issues. The United States will seek new   13