This chapter addresses the interface between health and intellectual property (IP). The chapter provides an introduction to the forms of IP principally as they relate to health products, and describes the international legal framework in which IP is situated. It addresses the ways in which IP...

Over the past decade, government trade and finance ministries have increasingly turned toward negotiating bilateral and regional trading arrangements, and away from negotiations in multilateral forums like the WTO. There are several reasons for this shift, including changes in the global...

The Open Society Foundations Public Health Program commissioned an interdisciplinary team to examine the extent to which gaps in financing are an obstacle to more robust local production of pharmaceutical products (including diagnostics, vaccines and treatments (DVT)) and personal protective...

The response of the international community to the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by a lack of transparency, substantial gaps in scientific understanding, inconsistent communication, lack of capacity for the manufacture of vaccines, substantial gaps in preparedness for diagnostics and...

UNDP first drew attention to the utility of competition law in health care as a tool to facilitate and promote access to health technologies in 2014. It published ‘Using Competition Law to Promote Access to Health Technologies: A guidebook for low- and middle-income countries’ (the...

The optimal approach to creating and maintaining an equitable balance in the international IPRs system will likely involve a combination of approaches. The goal of the international IPRs system should be to promote innovation, while protecting against the continuation and exacerbation of a stark...

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS Agreement”) is the first WTO agreement requiring Members to establish a relatively detailed set of substantive norms within their national legal systems, as well as requiring them to establish enforcement measures...