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...
Current drafts of the WHO Pandemic Accord lack a provision for access to knowhow/trade...
Negotiations are currently taking place at the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude a new pandemic agreement by May 2024. The objective of the...
Medicines Patent Pool signs first Covid-19 licence agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme. Others...
The Medicines Patent Pool, a UN-backed organisation whose mission is to expand access to essential medicines around the world, today announced its first agreement...
The European Commission’s compulsory licensing proposals are sensible but do not go far enough
An earlier version of this comment was published in Barron's on 21 July 2023. A Spanish translation of it is also available from El...
A better way to solve a crisis: A new mechanism for incentivising R&D on...
Antimicrobial resistance is the ‘silent’ pandemic: Globally, it costs 5 million lives a year, and is set to rise to more than 8 million...
Will the European Court of Justice put a stop to the evergreening of Truvada...
Truvada, the fixed-dose combination of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) and emtricitabine (FTC) is a critical medicine in both HIV treatment and prevention. It is...
Price, profit and the Covid-19 health technology pool: The example of remdesivir
We cannot yet know the precise trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic, nor which therapies or vaccines will eventually prove most effective in its treatment...
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...
Medicines price transparency: Ground still left to cover
Parts of this blog were previously published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe
Secret medicines prices are hotly debated as European health systems struggle to...
Dolutegravir Patent Licences Can Provide Access To All
This year the World Health Organization (WHO) added dolutegravir, an antiretroviral medicine for the treatment of HIV infection, to its Model List of Essential...