Matt Kavanagh, Health GAP
Call for Participation & Call for Papers
Access to Medicines Track
Global Congress on Intellectual Property & the Public Interest
15 – 18 December 2015
New Delhi, India
The fourth annual Global Congress will be held this December in New Delhi, India and the Access to Medicines track is calling for participation from:
- Scholars & researchers
- Activists & civil society networks
Apply to participate in the full session of panels, workshops & strategy/messaging sessions: http://global-congress.org/participate. In addition, an important portion of the Congress will include presentation of research and papers on Access to Medicines. When applying to participate you may indicate your interest in presenting a paper. Limited financial support for travel is available, with priority on participation from the global South. Please apply early if you will need assistance.
About the Access to Medicines Track
The Access to Medicines(A2M) track of the Fourth Global Congress on Intellectual Property in the Pulbic Interest will bring scholars, activists, and practitioners together to focus on how law and policy can be reshaped to expand access to quality, affordable medicines and health technologies for all. Today significant advances in HIV, Hepatitis C, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases hold the potential to transform the lives of people living in both the global North and South yet affordable access to these medicines is increasingly threatened by maximalist IP policies. The track will focus both on identifying pitfalls in current policy debates and on envisioning practical alternatives that can provide tools for expanding access to medicines worldwide. We will also explore the spaces in law and policy in which people’s rights of access to medicine and health technologies intersects with questions of IP & development, internet freedom, privacy rights, open source technologies, and other issues tackled throughout the Congress.
The track is particularly interested this year in exploring four key themes:
- A2M & Human Rights: The multiple intersections between human rights and IP as they impact health—both identifying critical issues related to patents as well as copyright and trademark and developing forward-looking ideas to build the power of the human rights framework to practically expand access to medicines.
- Taking Stock of Current Policy Space: patent law reforms underway in many countries as well as the threats from international trade and investment frameworks. We will also explore the relevance of openness to R&D, in conjunction with the openness track.
- Spotlight on Least Developed Countries: several developments have pushed us to look beyond the current producers of quality, low-cost generics to increasingly include a larger number of LMICs, including some LDCs as manufacturers of generic medicines. Yet there are significant barriers to this coming to fruition. Identifying barriers and opportunities in this regard will be a significant focus of this year’s congress. The track also aims to collaborate with the user rights track to highlight parallel concerns related to the introduction of copyright restrictions in LDCs.
- India’s Centrality in Access to Medicines: the Congress’s presence in India provides a key opportunity to discuss developmets in India’s patent law and policy—the model India currently provides globally for protecting public health and innovation together and changes that may affect the role of Indian generics in the global health economy.
About the Global Congress
The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (“Global Congress”) was instituted in 2011 at Washington D.C. Since its inception, three editions of the Global Congress have engaged researchers, civil society, academia, national and international governmental entities and the private sector in providing perspectives and future scenarios for intellectual property, innovation and development.The theme for the 2015 Congress is *Three Decades of Openness; Two Decades of TRIPS**. *Discussions in all tracks, as well as cross track conversations will be tailored around this theme. Day 1 of the Congress (15th December, 2015) will be open to all interested participants, including representation from the government, the judiciary, industry, academia, research/advocacy/policy organizations and any others. However, Days 2 and 3 of the Congress (16th and 17th December, 2015, respectively) shall comprise closed-door sessions, open only to participants registered/invited for the Congress. An additional day (Day 4 – 18th of December, 2015) has been set aside for smaller meetings and discussions on existing or potential collaborations between participants; to continue conversations begun on Days 1, 2 and 3; or to have meetings/presentations/discussions which we might not be able to strictly accommodate within the agenda.
