IP & Licensing Policies

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During its first years of existence, DNDi developed an intellectual property (IP) policy to guide its R&D activities and associated contractual agreements with the following objectives:

            The need to ensure that treatments are ultimately affordable to patients who need them and that access to these
               treatments is equitable;

            The desire to develop drugs as public goods when possible (although DNDi will not necessarily be able to control
               all IP for short- and mid-term projects).

The policy, which reflects the fact that DNDi outputs are likely to have negligible commercial value and that R&D agreements will often be made with public sector entities, calls for a pragmatic approach so that decisions regarding ownership of patents and of licensing terms are made on a case-by-case basis. In building its portfolio, DNDi will continue to negotiate to guarantee the best possible conditions for patients.

When negotiating access to a given proprietary technology, DNDi will carefully examine, among other topics, the issues of the field (diseases of interest for DNDi), the territory (countries where the diseases are endemic), and the market to be addressed (distribution through the private or public sector).

By very clearly defining and agreeing on these terms at the initiation of the discussions, the partner obtains the insurance that outside of these well defined boundaries, in which profit is intrinsically impossible, any other opportunities to enter into a private, profit-driven market is preserved for the partner, while providing DNDi the necessary freedom to operate before investing large resources to develop a program.

Click here to download the full DNDi’s IP policy


Please contact us at partnership@dndi.org to propose collaborative projects.