Urgent collective action to meet the challenge of this pandemic crisis: a coronavirus related...
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, first described the present coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic on the 11th...
New reports offer evidence for extending the WTO Decision on TRIPS to Covid-19 therapeutics...
In February 2024, the 13th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference will take place. WTO Members are expected to decide whether to extend the...
Vaccine knowledge needs to be a global public good: Remarks to the World Trade...
Ellen ‘t Hoen, Medicines Law & Policy, at the World Trade Organization-World Health Organization High-Level Dialogue on Expanding COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing to Promote Equitable...
The European Commission says Covid-19 vaccines should be global public goods, but do their...
The European Commission has entered into advance purchase agreements (APAs) for Covid-19 vaccines with six pharmaceutical companies and is concluding negotiations with two companies....
UN “Pact for the Future” intellectual property actions need revision to ensure innovation and...
UPDATE: From 22-23 September 2024, the Summit of the Future took place and adopted the Pact for the Future. The intellectual property paragraph of...
Covid-19 and the comeback of compulsory licensing
The Covid-19 outbreak raises many questions, including some we can answer using experiences gained in previous disease outbreaks. Here is one: how to deal...
CJEU Ruling on Truvada recalls ‘evergreening’ goes against public health interests
On 25th July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rendered its preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Article 3(a) of Regulation...
Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation is taking AbbVie to court over excessive pricing of Humira –...
On 21 February, the Dutch Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (PAF) took the bold step to take AbbVie to court, claiming the company’s pricing policy had...
Gilead’s sofosbuvir patent in India – options for global access to new hepatitis C...
Earlier this month the US pharmaceutical company Gilead obtained a patent in India for sofosbuvir, part of a treatment of hepatitis C that became...
How not to solve a crisis: The European Commission’s Plan for Transferable Data Exclusivity...
Drug-resistant infections, sometimes called “superbugs,” killed an estimated 1.27 million people in 2019, a number set to rise to 50 million by 2050. It is...