Drug companies should not take out patents on their new medicines or enforce patents in poor countries if that is likely to prevent patients from getting them, an influential commission set up by the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

The Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health spent two years drawing up proposals on the contentious and hard-fought issues of access to medicines in poor countries. Controversy over deaths from HIV/Aids, which has become a treatable disease in the rich world, was behind the setting up of the commission under the former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss.

The pharmaceutical industry has long argued that patents, granting a 20-year exclusive right to market a drug, are not the problem. It says that the absence of clinics, hospitals and medical staff are the real reason why people do not get treated. But the commission disagrees, saying generic companies should be allowed to make cheap copies in poor countries.

"In low-income countries they should avoid filing patents or enforcing them in ways that might inhibit access," the commission says. It encourages companies to license others to make their drugs.

Ms Dreifuss said she recognised the profit orientation of the industry, "but we think they can do more". More transparency was needed, so that poor countries knew which medicines were under patent, and pricing policies were clear. Governments should also do more, the report says; in particular, rich countries should devote an increasing part of their healthcare research and development spending on the needs of poor countries.