Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Public health stakeholders – and just about everyone else – may take notice of a meeting planned for May in the Netherlands, as it could offer the beginning of a new approach to pharmaceutical costs. High drug prices have become a ‘kitchen table’ issue in countries of all economic sizes recently, and the World Health Organization is teaming up with the Dutch government to address it in a new and practical way.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is deliberating on how to start over on its search for a new executive director after questions arose near the end of the process.
Calling it flawed and narrow and seemingly threatened by its contents, the leading United States business group and US government IP specialists are working to limit the impact of a recent United Nations report that made recommendations for the decades-old problem of ensuring affordable medicines reach people when they are under patent in a way that does not threaten innovation. One step in countering the UN report? Change the discourse in Geneva and elsewhere.
Once considered a breakthrough in negotiations to address problems of making cutting-edge medical products and research available to poor countries, the decade-old World Health Organization Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPOA) is now undergoing review, with the WHO Executive Board calling for a report on the initiative and plans for its future next year.
A new industry group today took the reins of the Fight the Fakes campaign, a growing coalition against fake medicines, the first rotation in leadership since its launch in late 2013.
The United States Chamber of Commerce today released its fifth annual International IP Index, which makes the case for the positive impact of intellectual property on economies. The United States scored highest, followed by top European economies and Japan. And near the bottom was India, despite recent efforts to accept the IP system. Separately, the report assesses international trade rules for IP and argues for nations to negotiate "TRIPS-plus" agreements.
A high-level meeting at the World Trade Organization today welcomed in an amendment to international trade rules for intellectual property aimed at boosting exports of affordable medicines. It also set out the way ahead to make it work.
For nearly 30 years, the United Nations World Health Organization has been referring to poor-quality and fake medicines as counterfeit. But that is about to change.
The World Health Organization and The Netherlands government will co-host a meeting in the spring that brings experts together to look at high drug prices and the purchasing of medicines.
The US Army has extended the comment period on the proposed licence to pharmaceutical company Sanofi on technology necessary to create a vaccine for the Zika virus. This is the second extension, and will permit public comments through 10 March 2017.