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

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 the problem of the know-how gap. We first raised attention...

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 negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the...

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 licensing for crisis management and amending Regulation (EC) 816/2006 (COM(2023)0224...

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 widespread production of pandemic countermeasures since the end of 2020...

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 here, in the Financial Times). The provision is important since...