IP, Trade, & Access to Essential Medicines

Catalog description

The relationship among intellectual property (IP), trade and access to affordable medical products remains an important global policy agenda. The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent demand for life saving medical products has heightened the importance of this policy agenda and called for further examination of the IP-trade-access to medicine nexus and the policy options to address current and future health crisis. The aim of this course is to examine policy and legal issues around IP, trade and public health. In particular, the class will examine the key trade-related IP regimes at the multilateral and regional levels, focusing on the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The course will provide an overview of the key issues and examine some of them in more detail through case studies. Topics to be covered include: IP protection and pharmaceutical products in historical context, the linkage between IP and trade, the role of IP in stimulating innovation in medical products, IP and price of medicines, abuse of IP rights in the context of pharmaceutical products, TRIPS provisions relevant to pharmaceutical products, the rules and practices on compulsory licenses to facilitate access to medicine, IP provisions relevant to medicine in selected regional trade agreements.