The book investigates varying experiences from the pandemic, providing a unique prism for assessing how IP balances competing requirements of innovation and access in times of crisis. Providing novel insight into the underlying principles of IP and how these cope under extreme pressures, Intellectual Property Rights in Times of Crisis will be an ideal read for scholars and students of intellectual property as well as those with an interest in health law and disaster law and health care law.

The drastic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted many of society's systemic inequalities. This timely and prescient book explores the role that Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) played in the pandemic and argues for developing a framework of sustainability, innovation, and global justice in IPR systems, to build a more globally sustainable regime. IPRs impact products and processes which address fundamental societal needs, yet innovation is largely incentivised by the granting of exclusive rights which can limit accessibility to new products and technologies. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Intellectual Property Rights in the Post Pandemic World adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to analyse the relationship between IPRs, sustainability, innovation and the circular economy. Chapters examine pressing issues concerning responding to crises, inventions, the circular economy, follow-on innovation and multi-stakeholder collaboration, among others, as possible ways to finance sustainability. Throughout, this book focuses on how the IP system was challenged by the events of the pandemic, with a view to understanding how IPRs can be used to promote progressive social and sustainable innovation in the future. This book will be beneficial for researchers in intellectual property law and development law along with practitioners and policy makers. It will also prove valuable for students with a particular interest in law, social sciences and public health.

This Article argues for certain exceptions to intellectual property liability--particularly regarding patents and copyrights--during times of crisis, especially for those who are volunteers contributing to response efforts. The authors first consider the massive risk of liability associated with the good faith efforts of nonprofits and individuals who are micro-manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical devices during a public health crisis. The Article discusses potential relief options such as compulsory licensing, march-in rights, and Defense Protection Act rights by proxy, and also draws on analogy to tort and real property doctrines including Good Samaritan laws, the doctrine of public necessity as a defense to trespass, and postponement of evictions during COVID-19 in real property to the extent that each may be helpful in fashioning an analogous statutory emergency declaration as to certain forms of intellectual property liability.

Patent law is crucial to encourage technological innovation. But as the patent system currently stands, diverse industries from pharmaceuticals to software to semiconductors are all governed by the same rules even though they innovate very differently. The result is a crisis in the patent system, where patents calibrated to the needs of prescription drugs wreak havoc on information technologies and vice versa. According to Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley in The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It, courts should use the tools the patent system already gives them to treat patents in different industries differently. Industry tailoring is the only way to provide an appropriate level of incentive for each industry. Burk and Lemley illustrate the barriers to innovation created by the catch-all standards in the current system. Legal tools already present in the patent statute, they contend, offer a solution—courts can tailor patent law, through interpretations and applications, to suit the needs of various types of businesses. The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the nexus of economics, business, and law in the twenty-first century.

The role that intellectual property law has played in the development and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines has attracted a great deal of public attention, policy focus and academic commentary since early 2020. IP rights are simultaneously presented as a key driver of health inequities, as well as central in facilitating unprecedented cooperation in vaccine development. This paper contributes to two interrelated areas of this debate, both of which are central to understanding how IP rights should function in a pandemic context. The first is the role that IP rights play, contractually, in permitting or restricting access to protected technologies and associated knowledge. The second is the reward IP rights ought to hold for their owner when the technological development in question is funded by the state. It addresses these two questions through analysis of the terms and conditions included in the publicly accessible Advanced Purchase Agreements (APAs) concluded by the UK government and EU Commission for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines. We argue that these voluntary contractual arrangements are suitable mechanisms for controlling the exploitation of IP in exceptional circumstances to safeguard the wider public interest. In so doing, we first investigate the nature and scope of the IP and IP related contractual clauses included in the APAs concluded by the UK government and EU Commission. Access to commercially sensitive data is rare and the relative transparency of the Covid-19 purchasing arrangements permits an almost unprecedented opportunity to examine the legal arrangements in depth. We find that the nature and scope of the IP and IP-related contractual clauses included in the APAs concluded by the UK government and EU Commission maintain strong rights in favour of the suppliers, with limited safeguards in favour of states. Secondly, our study breaks new ground by examining the role that IP controls play in these procurement contracts, arguing that IP safeguards are vital, and should be a core part of APAs. Third, we situate our analysis in the context of incentive-based theories of IP rights. APAs are established mechanisms for incentivising research and development in areas where the market-based incentives of IP rights fail to achieve state policy objectives. In this role they act as alternatives to these rights. They also operate to reallocate risk away from the IP owner and on to the state. For both these reasons we conclude that the existing approach to advance purchase agreements is inadequate to address these concerns. We therefore argue that their use justifies restricting IP rights in those agreements beyond the limitations currently provided for in statutory IP regimes. Our work evidences a clear need for change - greater attention to controls over the exercise of IP rights is warranted.

For some time, the word 'crisis' has been dominating international political discourse. But this is nothing new. Crisis has always been part of the discipline of international law. History indeed shows that international law has developed through reacting to previous experiences of crisis, reflecting an agreement on what it takes to avoid their repetition. However, human society evolves and challenges existing rules, structures, and agreements. International law is confronted with questions as to the suitability of the existing legal framework for new stages of development. Ulrich and Ziemele here bring together an expert group of scholars to address the question of how international law confronts crises today in terms of legal thought, rule-making, and rule-application. The editors have characterized international law and crisis discourse as one of a dialectical nature, and have grouped the articles contained in the volume under four main themes: security, immunities, sustainable development, and philosophical perspectives. Each theme pertains to an area of international law which at the present moment in time is subject to notable challenges and confrontations from developments in human society. The surprising general conclusion which emerges is that, by and large, the international legal system contains concepts, principles, rules, mechanisms and formats for addressing the various developments that may prima facie seem to challenge these very same elements of the system. Their use, however, requires informed policy decisions.