Mr Muhammad Zaheer Abbas

Biography

Dr. Muhammad Zaheer Abbas, Chief Investigator with the Australian Centre for Health Law Research (ACHLR), is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. He has undertaken extensive research on public health dimensions of intellectual property laws. He has written about TRIPS Agreement’s public health flexibilities like export-oriented compulsory licensing (Journal of World Intellectual Property, 2018), parallel importation (Journal of Generic Medicines, 2021), and patent opposition (Global Public Health, 2020). He has evaluated the possibility of invoking trade-related security exceptions (ANZSIL Perspective, 2021), the practical implications of ‘vaccine nationalism’ (South Views 2020), and the importance of localized supply chains (South Views, 2021). He has also analysed policy options like patent pooling (Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2020) and tiered pricing (Journal of Generic Medicines, 2020). Abbas has also considered the implications of free trade agreements (Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal, 2018) and evergreening (Journal of Generic Medicines, 2019) for affordable and equitable access to essential medicines. He has been providing expert commentary on the issue of access to vaccines and other COVID-related health technologies during the current pandemic.