Australia’s evolving drug landscape
FollowThis year we saw Australia put into force a new patent law. An intellectual property system that was Australia’s most comprehensive in over two decades. It came into effect on 15 April 2013 and no one knew exactly what to expect from it.
We have seen with cases like India, how one country’s patent laws can send ripples and disrupt the entire system. And, in the case of Thailand, how a country can take matters into its own hands to enact a public good.
It really all centres around compulsory licensing. A compulsory license, in simple legalese, is the use of a patented innovation that has been licensed by a state without the permission of the patent title holder. This started over a decade ago, when the World Trade Organization adopted the “Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health