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...
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...
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...
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...
Submission to the US International Trade Commission
On 17 June 2022, World Trade Organization (WTO) Members adopted a Ministerial Decision outlining flexibilities in the WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property...
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...
Continuing to ignore the problem of the know-how gap won’t make it go away.
The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for a variety of issues in access to medicines, one of which was finding a solution to...
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...
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...
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...