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 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...
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...
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...
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 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....
What is the ‘know-how gap’ problem and how might it impact scaling up production...
This entire article is also available as a PDF by clicking here.
1. Introduction.
How relevant are concerns about intellectual property rights causing problems for...
Transfer of technology and know-how for the production of pandemic-related health products in the...
A version of this brief was published on 13 June '25 by the Graduate Institute as part of their 'Governing Pandemic Snapshot' series: https://www.governingpandemics.org/gp-snapshot
During...
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...
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...