The Coalition planned to tax company income from patents at 17% instead of 30%. While it would have lifted the number of patents, there’s little to suggest it would have lifted productivity.
By implementing paywalls, making exclusive content deals and incorporating ad tech, big media companies have reshaped what was once an entirely free and open ecosystem.
Trademarking a shape of a product, or proving that a competitor is passing off their product as your own, is not easy. A high-profile settlement, though, is marketing gold.
The new variant is a warning: unless we take urgent action to correct global vaccine inequities, we risk the emergence of further variants, some of which may evade vaccines.
People need a constant supply of affordable, safe and efficacious medicine.
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Potential benefits of human genome editing include new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent genetic disorders. But there’s a significant gap in regulation.
Relying on donor funding means that the funder ultimately determines the health priorities. This is one reason why many programmes in Africa focus on a single disease such as HIV.
Until the late 19th century, patenting medicines was considered by some as controversial and even unethical.
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The pharmaceutical industry overall has been deeply opposed to waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents, but a historian of the industry explains that drug companies once opposed patents altogether.
A certification mark, such as Coffee Kenya, can be used by small businesses to indicate a guarantee of quality.
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Small and medium-sized businesses play an important role in economic growth and development but are hamstrung by their lack of adequate resources to market their goods and services.
Lowering the tax rates on profits from patents registered in Australia is unlikely to increase local research and development. But it will be a gift for multinationals.
Much remains to be resolved before the waiver is translated into increased vaccine supply.
Anita Anand, Canada’s minister of public services and procurement, opens a box with some of the first 500,000 of the two million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses that Canada secured last March through a deal with the Serum Institute of India.
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Despite some public virtue signalling, the Canadian government is not doing all it can to improve global access to COVID-19 vaccines. Canada has yet to announce its position on the WTO patent waiver.
South Africa has led efforts to share intellectual property relating to COVID-19 treatments, vaccines and tests.
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Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law; Director Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Managament (CIPPM), Bournemouth University, Bournemouth University