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)...
Commission report on competition enforcement in the pharmaceutical sector
Guest author Jacquelyn D. Veraldi is Assistant Professor of European Law at the University of Groningen. Guest author Tais A. Ruiz Palacios is a...
Cancer Drug Pricing on the World Health Organization’s Executive Board Agenda
On Thursday 24 January, the World Health Organization’s 144th Executive Board meeting will kick off in Geneva. One of the agenda items is access...
Brazil’s Federal Court Reviews Medicines Mailbox Patents
This week the media reported that the Brazilian federal court removed the patent protection for eculizumab, sold under the brand name Soliris by Alexion...
Corbyn’s Compulsory Licenses. Will they work?
On 24 September, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour party, announced a series of measures to bring medicines pricing in check and to...
Are gene-editing therapies patentable? A WIPO side event investigates.
On 6 December, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) organised an interesting panel on the patentability of new gene- and cell-based medical therapies, as a side...
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...
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...
Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation meets AbbVie in court, looking to advance its pricing case
“The value of a human life is infinite, but unfortunately our healthcare budget is not,” said former Dutch Health Minister Bruno Bruins, quoted by...
Why The Request By Least Developed Countries For An Extension Of The Transitional Period...
On 24 February 2015 Bangladesh on behalf of the 34 Least Developed Country members (LDCs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) submitted a request...