Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A recent article in the journal Nature Biotechnology finds that since a key United States Supreme Court decision, the European Union and United States have diverged in their patent filings for medical diagnostics.
The United States Department of Defense has announced that it intends to grant Sanofi Pasteur, a French pharmaceutical corporation, exclusive rights to develop a vaccine for the Zika virus. The decision follows outcry from the public and civil society groups over concerns of affordability and accessibility in taking such a step.
The Medicines Patent Pool has received a licence to develop ravidasvir, a new treatment for hepatitis C.
Members of the United States innovator business community have delivered a letter to President Trump requesting that the US Patent and Trademark Office be exempt from the federal hiring freeze announced in January.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Public Library of Science (PLoS), and other publishers and research organisations have announced an initiative aimed at increase the amount of scholarly citation data freely available online, called the Initiative for Open Citations.
A new report from Public Citizen, the US-based consumer rights advocacy group, shows that the 20 largest pharmaceutical corporations are spending significantly less on research and development of new medicines than they are making in profits.
A new industry report shows that the average prices for orphan drugs are increasing and are projected to comprise more than 20 percent of the patented pharmaceutical sales market by 2022.
A partnership of government agencies and organisations in the United States and United Kingdom have announced an investment of up to US$48 million into the development of new antibiotics and products to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, with the aim of having two new antibiotics in human trials in the next five years.
Public health group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today that it has joined civil society organisations from 17 countries in Europe in filing a patent challenge at the European Patent Office to Gilead’s patent on sofosbuvir, an important treatment for hepatitis C.
TB Alliance and the Medicines Patent Pool announced today a licensing agreement for the development of sutezolid, a new antibiotic drug candidate which may be used to treat tuberculosis.
Representatives of Chilean civil society and Congress this week presented the Chilean health minister with a proposal urging the government to take advantage of international trade law and a newly passed congressional resolution to issue compulsory licences on high-priced drugs for hepatitis C and prostate cancer.
In Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction, by Siva Vaidhyanathan, readers are introduced to the basics of intellectual property, framed in a way that illustrates how intellectual property both shapes and is shaped by larger economic, political and social contexts.