European Commission Publishes Expert Panel’s Recommendations on High Drug Prices
This month the European Commission published Innovative Payment Models for High-Cost Innovative Medicines, a report of the Expert Panel on effective ways of investing...
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...
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...
WHO Fair Pricing Forum: Watching for Drug Industry Accountability
by Katrina Perehudoff and Jennifer Sellin
Expensive medicines are a ubiquitous challenge from which no government is immune. Excessive price hikes are an urgent human...
“This week, the medicines were not there”: What is at stake in the pandemic...
Earlier this week I listened to a testimony from a community worker at a maternity ward where HIV-positive women gave birth. 17 babies were...
Human Rights Watch: All governments should endorse the WHO C-TAP Solidarity Call to Action
As the race towards a Covid-19 vaccine continues – with 11 leading candidates in phase 3 clinical trials, 14 more in phase 2 and...
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...
UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines calls for stronger public leadership in innovation...
The UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines published its report on 14 September. The Panel was established on 19 November 2015 by UN...
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...
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)...