How the ‘Oxford’ Covid-19 vaccine became the ‘AstraZeneca’ Covid-19 vaccine
The ‘Oxford / AstraZeneca’ vaccine is one of the world’s leading hopes in the race to end the Covid-19 pandemic. Its history is not...
Current drafts of the WHO Pandemic Accord lack a provision for access to knowhow/trade...
Negotiations are currently taking place at the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude a new pandemic agreement by May 2024. The objective of the...
Advanced Purchase Agreements for Covid-19 Vaccines: Do they ensure Global Public Good?
Advanced Purchase Agreements (APAs) were part of a strategy to provide upfront financing for Covid-19 vaccines and to accelerate their development and availability. Since...
The EU proposed Covid waivers of certain TRIPS rules are mostly meaningless
Since October 2020, discussions have been ongoing at the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council about a waiver of...
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 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....
CJEU Ruling on Truvada recalls ‘evergreening’ goes against public health interests
On 25th July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rendered its preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Article 3(a) of Regulation...
The European Parliament has now explicitly acknowledged the know-how problem too: time to include...
This technical briefing note is also available as a PDF here.
We have been calling attention to the problem of sharing know-how necessary for the...
European Parliament’s amendments make the Regulation for EU-wide compulsory licensing difficult to use and...
European Parliament legislative resolution of 13 March 2024, on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on compulsory...
Ensuring that intellectual property rights aren’t a barrier to scaling-up: the remarkable example of...
This week various international bodies are tackling different challenges in meeting the urgent problem of scaling-up manufacture of and access to vaccines for Covid-19....