Category Licensing Protected Materials

Sustainable Innovation: Intellectual Property, Technology Transfer, and Global Public Goods

QUT News, 22 February 2024 22nd February 2024 The role of intellectual property rights in technology transfer to developing countries and least developed countries to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a major theme of a new international…

Creative Commons Publishes Policy Paper: Towards Better Sharing of Cultural Heritage — An Agenda for Copyright Reform

[Brigitte Vézina] Over the past few months, members of the Creative Commons (CC) Copyright Platform along with CC friends from around the world have worked together to develop a policy paper addressing the key high-level policy issues affecting access and sharing of cultural heritage, notably by galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs). In this blog post, we provide some background on the paper and share a few highlights.

Medicines Patent Pool signs first Covid-19 licence agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme: Others must follow

[Medicines Law & Policy] The Medicines Patent Pool, a UN-backed organisation whose mission is to expand access to essential medicines around the world, today announced its first agreement on a Covid-19 therapy. The deal comes in the form of a licence and technology transfer agreement with Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) on molnupiravir, an investigational therapy for Covid-19 patients. The Medicines Patent Pool expanded its mandate to include Covid-19 technologies in March 2020.

QUT Forum on Access to Essential Medicines — 15 February 2017

This forum was hosted by the QUT Intellectual Property and Innovation Law Research Program and the Australian Centre for Health Law Research in the QUT Faculty of Law to coincide with the visit of the Hon. Michael Kirby to the QUT Faculty of Law. It assessed and evaluated the recommendations of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines. Access to medicines is a critical issue in respect of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, the SARS virus, Ebola, and the Zika virus. There have been a number of obstacles and barriers in respect of access to medicines — including the high prices caused by monopolies, and the absence of appropriate treatments for neglected diseases.

Acting Public Advocate and Speaker Johnson, Elected Officials, The Prep4all Collaboration, and Advocates Rally for Affordable HIV Prevention Medication

[NYC Councilmember Press Release] cting Public Advocate and New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Council Member Carlina Rivera, Assembly Member Dick Gottfried, former State Senator Tom Duane, founders of the PrEP4All Collaboration (and organizers of the #BreakThePatent campaign), and advocates held a rally to call on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to exercise its march-in rights and break Gilead’s patent of Truvada, the brand name medication for pre-exposure prophylaxis, also known as PrEP. March-in rights, as granted by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, allow the federal government to break patents in certain cases involving patents that resulted from publicly funded research. Breaking the patent in this case would make PrEP more affordable and accessible by allowing generic versions to enter the market.

3D Printing Shakes Up Intellectual Property Rights

The emerging trend in 3D printing of products has resulted in a massive spike in patents being classified, according to QUT researchers.

The QUT Faculty of Law Intellectual Property and Innovation Research Program is hosting an event on 3D Printing on Wednesday, October 25, 2018 at the State Library of Queensland.

The half-day symposium considers the role of 3D printing in intellectual property, education, community participation and innovation.

Lies, Distortions, and False Promise: The U.S. Position on Compulsory Licenses in the 2018 Special 301 Report

[Brook Baker] Once again the U.S. is unbelievably duplicitous in its 2018 Special 301 Report on permissible uses of compulsory and government use licenses by its trading partners, including most recently Colombia and Malaysia where it is announcing out-of-cycle reviews.  On the one hand, the USTR pays lip service to the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, saying that “the United States respects a trading partner’s right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all” (p. 33) and that it supports use of the so-called Paragraph 6 compulsory licensing system (p. 34), which has only been used once in 15 years.  However, it has withdrawn a statement in its 2017 Special 301 Report that “the United States respects its trading partners’ rights to grant compulsory licenses in a manner consistent with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration … ” On the other hand, the U.S. issued a broadside assault on the actual issuance of, or even discussion of compulsory licenses in a Report replete with lies, distortions, and false promises.