TRIPS Council to discuss IP and the public interest in the context of Covid-19
The search for new treatments and vaccines needed to respond to the Covid-19 outbreak has laid bare some key issues around intellectual property (IP)...
The EU proposed Covid waivers of certain TRIPS rules are mostly meaningless
Since October 2020, discussions have been ongoing at the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council about a waiver of...
Dutch health insurance company Menzis takes AstraZeneca to court over patent evergreening
Today health insurance company Menzis announced that it is taking the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to court over the pricing of Seroquel, a medicine...
The elephant in the room at the WHO Executive Board
The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke harshly about the lack of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries at the opening of...
Wrapping up 2019 – Noteworthy Medicines Law and Policy Events
2019 had its share of noteworthy medicines law and policy events. It was also a year that saw eye-popping new levels of pharmaceutical pricing....
Transfer of technology and know-how for the production of pandemic-related health products in the...
A version of this brief was published on 13 June '25 by the Graduate Institute as part of their 'Governing Pandemic Snapshot' series: https://www.governingpandemics.org/gp-snapshot
During...
Time for new pharmaceutical-innovation models
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable on earth, expected to be worth $1.4 trillion by the end of 2020. Last year,...
How patents, data exclusivity and SPCs interact to extend market exclusivity of medicines: the...
Patents usually confer 20-year exclusive rights on inventions. Data exclusivity laws confer, depending on the country, 5 to 10 years’ exclusive rights over safety...
Never say never – Why the High Income Countries that opted-out from the Art....
To limit the ability of patent owners to charge excessive prices for patented medicines, countries can grant compulsory licences which permit others to produce...
Medicines Law & Policy welcomes WHO’s Solidarity Call to Action to realise equitable global...
The World Health Organization today with Costa Rica launched the "COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP)" to ensure that knowledge, data and intellectual property are...