Pharmaceuticals and the Law

The Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, in partnership with The British Institute of International and Comparative Law are pleased to offer a new Executive Education course in Pharmaceutical Law. This course would be beneficial for legal practitioners including those in private practice or working as in house counsel for pharmaceutical or other healthcare services; executives of such companies including compliance officers; civil servants including those working for national health services or in setting health policy; those working for international organizations (including but not limited to the WTO, WIPO, WHO) and for NGOs (including humanitarian and development organizations that have programming in the field of health and anyone else with a keen interest in the link between public health, intellectual property and regulation.

Key information

When: TBC

Location: BIICL's London Office (17, Russel Square) and online via Zoom. Participants will have access to resources via a dedicated, password protected webpage

Course description and aims

Recent events including the COVID pandemic have brought pharmaceuticals, and the intellectual property and liability considerations around them to the forefront of legal and policy, as well as public debate. Although the business and innovation practices of the pharmaceutical industry are largely based on patents, other intellectual property rights including trademarks and trade secrets are highly relevant too. The industry benefits from research and innovation taking place elsewhere and government policy supporting life sciences and biomedicine needs also to be taken into consideration. At the same time, product liability issues for both pharmaceuticals and related developments cannot be side-lined whilst the human rights considerations of involved companies requires further and better understanding by legal professionals, policy makers and the public at large. Recent incidents including the cases brought against Purdue Pharma in the United States over marketing practices start to highlight some of the above issues but many other considerations received far less attention but are nonetheless critical.

Building on the combined expertise of two leading institutions in this area - The British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the Centre for Commercial law Studies at Queen Mary University of London - this is a wide-ranging course offering diverse legal and interdisciplinary perspectives exploring the nexus between global public health, intellectual property, regulation, liability and human rights issues.