Blog

The latest thoughts from Medicines Law & Policy partners.

Faced with unreasonable medicines prices, the Netherlands introduces pharmacy exemption in patent law.

On 1 February 2019, article 53(3), second sentence of the Dutch Patent Act 1995 came into force introducing a patent exemption for the preparation...
Fireworks

Wrapping up 2022 with some noteworthy medicines, law and policy events

Welcome to our annual, highly biased, overview of noteworthy events in the field of medicines law and policy. Also in 2022, Covid-19 remained a central...

The People vs. AbbVie

Today, 9 May 2025, is an important day in court for the Dutch Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (PAF). In February 2023, PAF started a court...

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...

Worldwide licensing of pandemic technologies is already current practice. The Pandemic Accord should protect...

The negotiations for a WHO pandemic accord are still in full swing this week. Talks are taking place behind closed doors, but it is...

World Trade Organization Members Embark on Review of the TRIPS Agreement

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council will meet on 10-11 July. On the agenda is the review...

ML&P’s Comments to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on the Zero Draft of the...

These remarks were delivered on the occasion of the fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement...
INB co-chairs, Precious Matsoso from South Africa and Roland Driece from the Netherlands opening the session on 18 June

Seven recommendations for sharing intellectual property, know-how and technology – report of Global Expert...

Negotiators of a Pandemic Treaty should heed the recommendations, published 15 July in the BMJ Global Health, to design a fair global system for...

Something is going terribly wrong with the EU Compulsory Licensing Regulation

This week the European Parliament will vote on amendments to the Commission’s proposed regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on compulsory licensing...

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...