Knowledge Ecology International

At IGWG7 in Geneva, which closed on 17 July with no agreed text, Knowledge Ecology International published proposed annex text tying pathogen benefit-sharing obligations to a manufacturer's market registration of a pandemic product, binding that manufacturer regardless of whether it actually used shared pathogen materials or genetic sequence data. The proposal offered a third route around the Africa Group's federated-labs model and the EU's hybrid centralised model, both on the table at the same session.

KEI is a Washington and Geneva-based non-governmental organisation, founded and directed by James Love, that campaigns on intellectual property and access-to-knowledge issues, with a long track record in access-to-medicines advocacy going back to the 1999 push for compulsory licensing of HIV drugs.

KEI's proposal is a third route alongside the Africa Group's federated national-labs model and the EU's hybrid centralised design, all three aiming to close the same gap: stopping pandemic-product manufacturers benefiting from shared pathogen materials without returning something to the countries that supplied them.