Washington – Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and other elected officials lobbied the Obama administration for a provision in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that would protect pharmaceutical companies making some of the most cutting-edge and expensive drugs against competitors who want to make cheaper, generic versions of those medicines.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated privately. Members of Congress have complained about difficulties they have in determining what the nations involved are agreeing to, and the only release to the public about anything in the agreement was done by WikiLeaks.

Malloy spokesman Devon Puglia said the governor is not ready to weigh in on the TPP. Several members of the Connecticut congressional delegation already have said they would oppose it, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd, is a leader of the opposition.

"We have not seen the contents of the agreement and cannot comment on something we haven’t seen," Puglia said.

The governor did weigh in on at least one hot-button issue in the proposed trade pact. In 2011, Malloy came down on the side of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry on the issue of how long some of their most expensive drugs should be protected under the TPP, putting the governor at odds with consumer and health advocates, including the AARP, on the issue.

The provision concerns the fate of biological drugs, made from living organisms and used to treat a growing number of diseases that now include cancer, AIDS, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

Popular biologic drugs include Remicade and Enbrel, which fight rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease.

Under U.S. law the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has 12 years of “data exclusivity," the period during which generic versions of the drugs — known as biosimilars — that are manufactured using data generated by the original maker, cannot be approved for sale by the FDA .

Malloy and a group of elected officials that includes other governors and key members of Congress have asked Obama to insist U.S. trading partners under the TPP adopt the U.S. standard — which is longer than that in Canada and Mexico and most countries in Europe and Asia.

“Among your priorities for these negotiations, we ask that you include very strong intellectual property rights provisions, consistent with U.S. law, for protecting the investments of our innovative, intellectual property-intensives sectors, such as biopharmaceuticals,” said a letter to Obama signed by Malloy and six other governors.

The letter also said the biopharmaceutical sector supports more than 3 million U.S. jobs.

An aide to the Connecticut governor said that Malloy, in signing the letter, wanted U.S. law — whatever the time period it provides for protections — to be the controlling time period in any agreement.

Connecticut has a substantial drug industry presence, and Malloy is committed to encouraging bioscience as a jobs driver for the future, pushing, among other things, to attract the Jackson labs, a facility in Farmington that specializes in genetic research.

The 11 Pacific Rim nations that would join the United States in the TPP have periods of exclusivity that range from zero to 12 years. The exclusivity period in Japan and Canada is eight years.

President Obama, the AARP and others want that period of exclusivity to be seven years, or less, in the United States. So does the generic drug industry