Since the United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced on May 5, 2021, that that Biden-Harris Administration would support waiving protections for intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines, I will admit to having paid little attention to the development of issues surrounding this topic.
However, the rest of the medical, intellectual property, legal and other communities have continued to wrangle with it. A few articles analyzing patents on COVID-19 vaccines have been authored (see links), showing that patents have been filed continuously by the big pharmaceutical companies behind vaccines, and that intellectual property rights are far more complex than news releases make them out to be.
It was just on March 16th the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced some members came to any accord on a waiver agreement. It’s a preliminary compromise between the EU, India, South Africa, and the US, not fully fleshed out, and not yet including all 164 member countries of the WTO, allowing for the production of COVID-19 vaccines outside normal IP restrictions.
Not all countries and leaders are on board with this plan. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not agree with the waiver planned, because he believes that patents are part of the incentive for companies to engage in new research. Scholz opined that moving production facilities to countries in Africa would more effectively increase the availability in emerging economies.
In an interview with Harvard Law professors Terry Fisher and Ruth Okediji, the two seem to argue that both issues impact some nations’ (like Mozambique, Namibia, and Sudan) ability to access and distribute these new vaccines. Beyond COVID-19, an overhaul of the whole system may be needed before some countries can reliably and regularly produce or even access pharmaceutical products.
Meanwhile, various pharmaceutical companies have been suing each other over various patents relations to components of the COVID-19 vaccine. Developers of the components and the major vaccine creators (Moderna and Pfizer) are facing each other over multiple suits.
I cannot begin to develop or articulate an adequate opinion
on what we need to do to better care for the global population and widen
pharmaceutical distribution (I lack those qualifications), but I do know change is needed. The US purchased more vaccines than it needed.
For now, visit Moderna’s patent webpage to see their IP holdings and a list of their COVID-19 patents (with links to PDFs!)