In the decade since the Doha Declaration was adopted, significant progress has been made in addressing problems associated with innovation and access to medicines, including through expanded financial support for procurement and distribution of treatments and vaccines and the establishment of...

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential...

Annual worldwide spending on medicines is anticipated to exceed $1.2 trillion by 2016. Developing countries, and particularly so-called emerging markets, will account for a substantial portion of the growth in spending on medicines. A good part of global market demand will be satisfied by...

Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride...

Recent events have, once again, catapulted microbes into the forefront of media crisis-reporting. No sooner than the wandering TB-carrier evading the CDC's dragnet fades from our newspapers, (along with the sudden emergence and disappearance of SARS, the threat from Saddam's smallpox, and the...

These are neither the best of times nor the worst of times for the pharmaceutical industry, or for global public health. Media reports regarding recent legal developments would suggest that the originator pharmaceutical industry is facing a new and dangerous threat to its long-term welfare,...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

Stakeholder groups have different interests in health claims which may be complementary but also conflicting. It is not clear on beforehand, how managers should deal with legal requirements on claims. Nor is it clear how legal authorities can adjust the present claims regime to address market,...

Israel presents an intriguing conundrum: on the one hand, it provides quality healthcare in a near-universal healthcare system; on the other, it has maintained healthcare costs level at approximately 7.7% of GDP. This comes at a time when all western nations struggle with one or both sides of...