Posts Tagged: "compulsory licensing"

Iancu, Kilbride, Israel Separate Fact from Fiction During IPWatchdog LIVE Panel on TRIPS IP Waiver

On Monday of IPWatchdog LIVE in Dallas, a panel on “The TRIPS IP Waiver: Separating Fact & Fiction” was moderated by president and CEO of the PCT learning center and founding partner of Berenato & White, John White, and featured IP leaders Andrei Iancu, Patrick Kilbride, and Chris Israel. The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement is an international agreement among members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which sets minimum standards in the international rules governing intellectual property. In 2020, India and South Africa proposed a TRIPS Agreement waiver proposal that would temporarily waive intellectual property rights protections for technologies needed to prevent, contain, or treat COVID-19, including vaccines and vaccine-related products. The proposal has been hotly contested globally, but the Biden Administration said in May of this year that the United States would back it.

A Third Option: Limited IP Waiver Could Solve Our Pandemic Vaccine Problems

In the early days of the vaccination efforts, Americans were anxiously online trying to register for a COVID-19 vaccination appointment. Reports of success at 1:30 am and 2:30 am made the rounds as new appointments dropped onto websites. Also common were stories of vaccine elitism and discussions of which vaccine is “the best.”  News reports continue to show a steady uptick in the percentage of vaccinated Americans. Elsewhere in the world though, the story is very different, and a darker picture is emerging. In Africa, many countries have vaccinated less than 2% of their population. While vaccine distribution is difficult in many regions of the developing world, this is a hurdle that medical assistance groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, are accustomed to handling. The challenges are known. What is most difficult in combating COVID-19 is obtaining the vaccines in the first place. Some argue that IP rights are the key problem and should be waived, while others claim they are the only solution and that waiver would be catastrophic. This article suggests a third option, somewhere between voluntary vaccine donation and a full waiver of IP rights, that may offer a way forward.

Calls for Compulsory Licensing and IP Waivers of COVID-19 Vaccines Ignore Technical Complexities

Though it is not over, it seems that the end of the Covid-19 pandemic may be in sight. A select group of countries has managed to bring vaccines to the market in record time. Take the United States, for example. At the time of this writing, three U.S. companies have managed to produce vaccines that received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The intellectual property that underlies these products quite literally has life-saving potential. This achievement no doubt represents a significant feat in human ingenuity, but it also presents a ripe issue in the intellectual property space — namely, compulsory licensing and intellectual property (IP) waivers. Some feel that the cost of sharing this information represents a bold degradation of the intellectual property system. In developing countries, however, the lack of vaccine availability is proving particularly difficult to manage.

Why Innovation Would Survive a COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver

Intellectual property protection has played an important role in this pandemic. As some have pointed out, without legal protection for innovative ideas, there may not have been such a rapid response to the pandemic – both in terms of testing/ treatment and, most recently, vaccines. Companies like Moderna, in conjunction with research and funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have spent a decade developing key technology that enabled quicker vaccine development than ever before. Without some intellectual property protections in place that provide strong financial incentives to invest in new ideas, innovation like this may never have come to light. Nevertheless, India and South Africa initiated a proposal in October that is gaining traction among like-minded World Trade Organization (WTO) members. This proposal would temporarily suspend certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement) for products related to COVID-19, including vaccines. What began with a handful of nations has now reached a majority, with 57 national sponsors of the proposal, and over 60 WTO members who are in support.

Gutting Patents Won’t Speed the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout

India and South Africa recently urged the World Trade Organization to suspend intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The claim is that this would allow developing countries to manufacture “cheap” COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines, hastening the end to the pandemic—at least, that’s what proponents claim. They’re wrong. Dangerously wrong. Gutting IP protections won’t make COVID-19 medications more readily available but it will set a terrible precedent that will chill future medical innovation.