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...

Medicines Patent Pool signs first Covid-19 licence agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme. Others...

The Medicines Patent Pool, a UN-backed organisation whose mission is to expand access to essential medicines around the world, today announced its first agreement...

UN “Pact for the Future” intellectual property actions need revision to ensure innovation and...

UPDATE: From 22-23 September 2024, the Summit of the Future took place and adopted the Pact for the Future. The intellectual property paragraph 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...

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...

The European Commission says Covid-19 vaccines should be global public goods, but do their...

The European Commission has entered into advance purchase agreements (APAs) for Covid-19 vaccines with six pharmaceutical companies and is concluding negotiations with two companies....

MSF’s Access Campaign is an invaluable actor in global health; shutting it down is...

On 20 June, STAT News reported that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is closing down their Access Campaign, effective as of 31 December 2024. It...

New Dutch Foundation to Address High Medicines Pricing Announces Plan to File Complaint with...

The newly established Dutch Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation has announced its first action to address unreasonably high medicines prices in the Netherlands. The Foundation will...

Will the European Court of Justice put a stop to the evergreening of Truvada...

Truvada, the fixed-dose combination of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) and emtricitabine (FTC) is a critical medicine in both HIV treatment and prevention. It is...

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...