Guatemala amends pharmaceutical patent law.

An amendment to Guatemala's pharmaceutical intellectual property law delaying the further application of TRIPs-compliant patent laws until January of 2005 passed into law on February 12, 2003. TRIPs requires that developing nations, such as Guatemala, protect patents by 2006.

The original decree, enacted in September 2000, put in place TRIPs-compliant patent laws and provided a 15-year period for the protection of confidential test data, which is longer than similar protections in the United States and European Union. The recently enacted amendment delays the honoring of patents until January of 2005, a date still well within the 2006 requirement imposed by

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