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...
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...
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...
WTO Covid-19 TRIPS Decision: Some observations
This morning, 17 June at 5 AM the 12th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC12) approved a package of decisions and declarations. The...
Sharing know-how/trade secrets during a pandemic: We must be planning for it now
Medicines Law & Policy has recently proposed a provision for inclusion in the draft WHO pandemic instrument currently being discussed in Geneva (here and...
What is the ‘know-how gap’ problem and how might it impact scaling up production...
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1. Introduction.
How relevant are concerns about intellectual property rights causing problems for...
Pharmaceutical patents and data exclusivity in an age of AI-driven drug discovery and development
This is an excerpt from a longer report on AI, medicines development and the patent system.
Download the full report here (or by clicking...
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...
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...
Lessons for a pandemic preparedness treaty from previous successes and failures with treaty-based technology...
This post can also be downloaded as a PDF here.
1. Introduction
Scaling-up production of new vaccines to provide many billions of doses on a time-scale...