Prof Madhavi Sunder
Frank Sherry Professor of Intellectual Property Law
at the Georgetown University Law Center
About the speaker:
Madhavi Sunder, the Frank Sherry Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, is a widely published and influential scholar of intellectual property law, law and technology, women’s human rights, and international development. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary, straddling private and public law, and engages the global dimensions of law, from patents and access to medicines, including Covid 19 vaccines, to trademarks and university brands. Her book, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice (Yale University Press 2012) brings a humanist approach to intellectual property law. The author of over 40 articles and book chapters, she has published in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and many other leading law reviews. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, L.A Times, PBS Newshour, The Harvard Business Review and The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Abstract:
What is the role of intellectual property in resolving public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic? Professor Sunder will chronicle the history and lessons learned with respect to intellectual property during the COVID-19 pandemic and make recommendations for how retooling intellectual property may offer a cure as the world prepares for the next pandemic. She will also diagnose a number of causes for the inequitable distribution of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines. Going further, Professor Sunder will make concrete suggestions for reform, including delinking vaccine development from monopoly rights in technology, enhanced legal requirements under national and international law for sharing publicly funded technologies in pandemic times, and funding by rich nations to former colonies to build local vaccine manufacturing capacity in low and middle-income countries.
