Access to drug patents can be a matter of life and death in developing countries. Global discussions have focused on how to prevent the “tragedy of the anti-commons,” where the use of key drugs is off-limits due to intellectual property rights, while at the same time maintaining incentives to innovate. The Medicines Patent Pool is an initiative that goes beyond the discussion of removing patent barriers for medicines to increase access to new, affordable HIV treatments in developing countries.

Ellen 't Hoen is an independent consultant in pharmaceutical law and policy. She has particular expertise in the areas of access to medicines and intellectual property. Her most recent achievement is the creation of the Medicines Patent Pool to accelerate the availability of low-cost HIV treatments in developing countries through patent licensing. In 1981 she co-founded DES Action Netherlands and remained coordinator until 1990. In 1990 she joined Health Action International to head the policy and campaigns department. From 1996 to 1999, she was the international coordinator of the independent drug journal La Revue Prescrire/Prescrire International and the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB). From 1999 to 2009, she was Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. In 2009, she became Senior Advisor for Intellectual Property and Drug Patent Pool at WHO/UNITAID, where she founded the Drug Patent Pool, which aims to broker and provide patent licenses for antiretroviral medicines with the aim of increasing access to cheap and better medicines. modified ARVs, for example pediatric formulations or fixed-dose formulations for use in low- and middle-income countries. She served as Executive Director of the Medicines Patent Pool until June 2012. She won several awards for her work on the effects of drug exposure (DES) in the 1980s and 1990s, including the prestigious Harriet Freezerring Prize in 1989. In 2005, in 2006 and 2010, she was listed by Managing Intellectual Property magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property in the world. She is a research fellow at the IS HIV/AIDS Academy of the University of Amsterdam and author of the book /"The Global Politics of Pharmaceutical Monopoly Power. Drug patents, access, innovation and the application of the WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health ./" which was published in January 2009 and can be downloaded for free here: http://www.msfaccess.org/content/global-politics-pharmaceutical-monopoly-power. She is a member of the World Health Organization's Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Policies and Management and a member of the Advisory Board of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM).

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