In 1969 Canada began programs at both the national and provincial levels to lower prescription drug prices. These programs may have contributed to a significant decline between 1970 and 1974 of 39 percent in the average price of 16 drugs selected for study. During this time, the average price for the same drugs in the United States declined only 1.4 percent. One major program, a change in the c...

Abstract This article examines global vaccine inequity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We critique intellectual property (IP) law under 1994 WTO TRIPS Agreement, and specifically, role that IP has played in enabling inequities of production, distribution pricing context. Given failure international response mechanisms, including COVAX C-TAP, to address inequity, we argue waiver proposal should be...

Biographical notes: Jayashree Watal is a Fellow of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Research, New Delhi, and Visiting Fellow of the Institute for International Economics, Washington DC. She was Director, Trade Policy Division, Ministry of Commerce, New Delhi. Watal was responsible for TRIPS negotiations in the Uruguay Round from 1989-91. She has recently completed a com...

Parasites, by altering the nutritional and energetic state of their hosts, can significantly alter their foraging behaviour. In honeybees, an infection with Nosema ceranae has been shown to lower the energetic state of individual bees, bringing about changes in behaviours associated with foraging. Comparing the foraging trip times, hive times in between trips, and the crop contents of uninfecte...

Several recent technological standards were accompanied by patent pools—arrangements to license relevant intellectual property as a package. A key distinction made by regulators—between patents essential to a standard and patents with substitutes—has not been addressed in the theoretical literature. I show that pools of essential patents are always welfare increasing, while pools which include ...

Several recent technological standards have been accompanied by patent pools – arrangements to license multiple patentholders’ relevant intellectual property as a package. A key distinction made by regulators – between patents essential to a standard and patents with substitutes – has not been addressed in the theoretical literature. I show that pools of essential patents are always welfare-pos...

Over the last few decades, countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) all had to revise their intellectual property systems. These revisions resulted at first from bilateral pressure of major trading partners such as the US and EU, then from the WTO-TRIPS Agreement and more recently from bilateral Free Trade Agreements. To observe the IP developments in ASEAN over...

Many recent international agreements sponsored by bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), aim to facilitate the global free flow of goods, services and capital, by opening markets under the threat of trade sanctions. Nation States signing such agreements, in particular the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), agree to suffer a sovereignty deficit in order to...

This paper provides a broad-ranging review in a global context of many aspects of developing changes in intellectual property rights (IPR) in response to the currently rapidly changing technological and information industries. As such, it covers such matters as knowledge ownership, the IPR framework, TRIPS and WTO in relation to developing countries, technology transfer and balance in a world-w...