Briefs & Briefing Documents

In addition to our tools and blog, ML&P occasionally delves into complex topics, posting brief explanations to make their legal implications more clear and understandable. We also undertake longer research projects, to more thoroughly explore issues and make policy recommendations. These are posted below.

Briefing Documents

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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 as clear, though, as it may first seem. Medicines Law & Policy has written a technical briefing note that contextualises the respective roles of Oxford University, the Jenner Institute, AstraZeneca and these other actors, and provides comments as well as raises some important questions about what might yet be done better and what lessons can be learned for the future. Click here to read it.

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EU Review of Pharmaceutical Incentives:
Suggestions for Change

In June 2019, Medicines Law & Policy published a series of briefing documents that aim to contribute to the discussion on high medicines prices, in particular those that result from market exclusivity. The publication makes recommendations for policy and legislative change in the areas of Supplementary Protection Certificate, Data Exclusivity, and Orphan Medicinal Product regulations. The documents can be downloaded in their entirety, or by section, using the links below. A presentation on the documents made at a 3 June event co-hosted by the European Public Health Alliance is available here.

Briefs

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 new agreement is to learn from mistakes made during the...

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 Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that countries could use to access Covid-19...

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 Ministerial Conference took place in Geneva, Switzerland 12-16 June; negotiations...

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 and South Africa proposed at the World Trade Organization’s Council...

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 of one or two years has never been undertaken before....