Following closely in the footsteps of India , China has announced the release of a new patent system in which it can grant compulsory licenses to generic pharmaceutical manufacturers to allow them to make copies of on-patent branded medicines. Compulsory licenses are used by countries to override patents when a country deems that a health crisis warrants such action. While compulsory licenses have been granted in moderation since the signing of the Doha Declaration ...

A recent study in the Public Library of Science's (PLoS) Medicine journal provides a review of the Doha Declaration , and finds that the issuance of compulsory licenses (CLs) dropped significantly after 2006, and that upper-middle-income countries (UMICs) face barriers to utilizing CL's excessively. Compulsory licenses are used by countries to override patents when the country deems that a health crisis warrants such action. When the Doha Declaration was first sig...