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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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....
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...