Brief

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...

Opmerkingen bij de notitie Dwanglicenties van B.J. Bruins, Minister voor Medische Zorg.

Op 15 juni 2018 stuurde Minister Bruins een notitie over dwanglicenties aan de Tweede Kamer. In deze briefing maken wij een aantal voorlopige opmerkingen...

European Parliament’s amendments make the Regulation for EU-wide compulsory licensing difficult to use and...

European Parliament legislative resolution of 13 March 2024, on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on compulsory...
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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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...