Never say never – Why the High Income Countries that opted-out from the Art....
To limit the ability of patent owners to charge excessive prices for patented medicines, countries can grant compulsory licences which permit others to produce...
EU Review of Pharmaceutical Incentives: Recommendations for Change
In 2016, the European Council decided it was time for a review of the incentives that the EU provides to companies that develop new...
The last mile: A few suggestions for the WHO Pandemic Agreement’s last two weeks...
This technical briefing note is also available as a PDF here.
On 16 April, the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to draft and...
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...
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...
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 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...
The Role of Activism in Shaping Law and Policies that Support Access to Medicines
This article is also available as a PDF here.
Almost 26 years ago, here in Amsterdam, on November 25-26, 1999, Health Action International, Médecins Sans...
Proposed TRIPS waiver a hollow diplomatic compromise with little practical impact
In October of 2020, 9 months into the pandemic, fearing conflicts over intellectual property (IP) related to medical measures to fight the pandemic, India...
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....