Updated TRIPS Flexibilities Database
In January 2023, a number of cystic-fibrosis patient organisations asked the governments of Brazil, India, South Africa and Ukraine to invoke compulsory licensing and...
WHO Members meet to finalise the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing Instrument
In May 2025, the WHO member states adopted the Pandemic Agreement, but they left the work to establish an instrument for Pathogen Access and...
The Most Common Misunderstanding about Compulsory Licensing
The belief that a country can only use compulsory licensing in cases of public health emergencies is a myth that has proven difficult to...
The Waiver that Wasn’t: Is the pharma lobby responsible?
Systemic lobbying pressure from pharmaceutical companies – allegedly attached to threats to withdraw investments – may have been responsible for the watering down of...
Covid-19 and the comeback of compulsory licensing
The Covid-19 outbreak raises many questions, including some we can answer using experiences gained in previous disease outbreaks. Here is one: how to deal...
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...
Dutch Minister of Health writes open letter to pharma, threatens to name and shame
"Dear Pharma," writes the Dutch Minister of Health, Bruno Bruins in an open letter in the daily newspaper the Volkskrant, "Last week two messages jumped...
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...
The US NIH will share technology with WHO to fight the pandemic
The US National Institutes of Health today committed to sharing several technologies with a World Health Organization body tasked with increasing access to Covid-19...
Medicines Law & Policy responds to US Health and Human Services Department request for...
On 12 December 2023 the US Health and Human Services Department (HHS) posted a notice and request for comments on “the implications of access...