This issue's cover story focuses on the ongoing debate over the COVID-19 waiver, the “five steps” alternative (page 6). Haynes and Boone’s Roger Kuan put the situation succinctly: “The pledges made by pharmaceutical companies are welcome, but if things fail to change drastically, more governments and even more in the IP space might lean towards temporarily waiving vaccine IP rights.”

We also look at China’s latest update to its patent laws (page 7), which includes an amendment that creates a linkage system for patent listing and pre-approval adjudication of patent claims, which sounds a lot like the Hatch Waxman system in the US.

Elsewhere, we look in detail at experimental use exceptions in the UK (page 9), and the intersection of new plant varieties protection and genetic editing techniques (page 11).

We hope you enjoy the issue.