WHO’s Essential Medicines Committee takes aim at rising prices, adds new treatments for cancer...
On 1 October, the World Health Organization published its latest Model List of Essential Medicines (EML) and Essential Medicines for Children (EMLc). Updated roughly...
Wrapping up 2025: A tumultuous year for global public health law & policy
The end of 2025, a tumultuous year for global public health, is here, and it’s time for the usually highly biased Medicines Law &...
Some Surprises in the European Commission’s New Intellectual Property Strategy
The European Commission's new intellectual property (IP) strategy is out and it holds a number of surprises for access to medicines. After restating the...
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...
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...
Time to put a stop to the abuse of orphan drug regulation- the latest...
Today, the Dutch Medical Journal (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde) reported on the case of lutetium-octreotaat, a cancer drug developed by researchers in the Dutch...
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...
WTO Members discuss proposal to suspend certain intellectual property protection during the Covid-19 crisis
An earlier version of this comment was published by The Wire on 13 October 2020.
On 2 October, India and South Africa sent a proposal...
WIPO and pharma industry launch global medicines patent database
On 25 September, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in collaboration with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) launched the Patent...
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...