A/HRC/11/12 page 12 1. Transition periods 28. TRIPS grants member States different deadlines for implementation depending on their level of economic development. Developing countries had until 2000 to comply with TRIPS. Countries that did not grant product patent protection in certain areas of technology, such as India, Egypt and Brazil, had an additional five years to comply with TRIPS with respect to those areas of technology. LDCs had until January 2006 to implement TRIPS, which was extended to 1 July 2013. With respect to medicines, the Doha Declaration granted LDCs an extension to 2016. 29. The potential of the full use of the transition period to increase access to medicines is demonstrated in the case of India which has become a global supplier of affordable generic medicines.34 This is primarily due to the fact that in the early 1970s, India eliminated product patent protection for medicines and only preserved process patent protection, thus encouraging the growth of the domestic pharmaceutical industry specializing in the production of generic versions of medicines that were patented in developed counties. This catapulted India from a country importing most of its medicines at extremely high prices to a country that has become one of the most important exporters of affordable life-saving medicines to the developing world. 30. While some developing countries such as India made full use of this transition period by providing product patent protection only in 2005 on the expiry of their TRIPS deadline, others such as Brazil introduced product patent protection for medicines before their respective deadlines. Several LDCs also complied with TRIPS before their deadlines. Twelve francophone LDCs, for example, brought their legislative standards substantially in line with TRIPS by 2002, 11 years ahead of their 2013 deadline.35 Furthermore, at the time of the Doha Declaration, all but three (Angola, Ghana, and Malawi) of the 25 African member States already had laws which approved patents for medicines.36 Cambodia and Nepal appear to be the only LDCs to have excluded pharmaceutical products from patentability until 2016.37 31. The importance of the transition period is underscored by the fact that the absence of product patents on medicines can, help establish local manufacturing capacity, promote generic manufacturing and facilitate the import of affordable medicines from other countries. Developing countries that have been successful in the use of the transition period in any of these 34 India is the main supplier of essential medicines for developing countries with about 67 per cent of medicines produced in India being exported to developing countries. See Médecins Sans Frontières campaign “Save the pharmacy of the developing world”. 35 See footnote 31 above, p. 73. 36 Ibid. 37 S. Musungu and C.Oh, “The use of flexibilities in TRIPS by developing countries: can they promote access to medicines?”, CIPIH, World Health Organization, 2006 pp. 13-15.