Indigenous Australians have lived in and off the Australian continent for at least 40,000 years meaning their knowledge of locally found plants and animals is unparalleled. This knowledge has ecological significance, with land and ‘bush’ management techniques employed historically and currently, having important effects for the stewardship and conservation of biodiversity. In the last 20 years,...

In May 2003, the 56th World Health Assembly mandated the creation of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH), in large part because the trad ditional mechanisms of research and development (R&D) for new medicines are not performing well for diseases that affect the majority of the world’s poor.1 Consequently, inequities of access to medical innovatio...

Among the many trade conoicts that divide the postindustrial economies of Europe, the United States, Japan, and the Commonwealth from the less information-driven economies of the rest of the world, one of the most consequential is the debate over how to balance access to medicines with the intellectual property protection demanded by their developers. Among the many facets of this debate is the...

Globalization of intellectual property (IP) protection for medicines has been advancing during the past decade. Countries are obliged to adapt their legislation as a requirement of their membership to the World Trade Organization or as a condition of being part of international trade agreements. There is a growing recognition that, in low-income countries, stronger IP protection is a barrier to...

Recognising global health as a rapidly emerging policy field, the German federal government recently released a national concept note for global health politics (July 10, 2013). As the German government could have a significant impact on health globally by making a coherent, evidence-informed, and long-term commitment in this field, we offer an initial appraisal of the strengths, weaknesses, an...