The problem surrounding the exemption of IP rights for Covid-19 vaccines

The Covid-19 pandemic has been raging on for 2 years. During these difficult times, the citizens of the world have suffered immeasurable losses, with the total number of deaths far surpassing 5 million and counting. As the number of deaths keeps rising, the conflict between countries and organizations about the exemption of IP rights for Covid-19 vaccines keeps on booming. 

America under the Biden Administration has been a strong supporter of the Covid-19 vaccines exemption. 

However, although America is the greatest country in the world, this matter is far more complicated than even them to handle by themselves. 

For instance, although the exemption of IP rights for Covid-19 vaccines ‘might’ help the world, what about the researchers and pharmaceutical companies who have invested billions of dollars into the making of that vaccines?

What will they get? Compensation? 

Yes, they will definitely get compensated! 

But for how much? 1 dollar is also compensation.

There are no clear regulations about the amount of compensation for the pharmaceutical companies and the countries wouldn’t also write a trillion-dollar paycheck for them as they don’t exactly know what the exemption can do for the world and overall, this matter is hard to calculate.

There are also many aspects that come into play but just for the economic aspect alone, the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t risk it.

Accordingly, at the moment, Joe Biden and other organizations can only call out to the countries and the pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer to temporarily waiver their rights.

Expert opinions

Nina Fitzgerald, a partner at Ashurst in Sydney stated: “IP rights were developed to encourage and reward innovation. A failure to provide such a reward will likely discourage the significant investment that is necessary to develop products and methods and, in particular, pharmaceutical products.”

According to Fitzgerald, the real risk with waiving patent rights without providing any compensation to patentees or those funding research and development is that the aftermath problem, meaning should another pandemic arise, or even a new variant of Covid which is not adequately addressed by the current treatments or vaccines, companies will not be incentivized to research and develop a treatment and/or vaccine.

That is also one of the dimmer reasons why the US government can’t push Moderna and Pfizer too hard on this matter, cause they still need the companies to produce and research vaccines, cures for any potential diseases in the future. 

She added: “Further, there is no incentive to publicly disclose information regarding the treatment or vaccine in a patent. Therefore, if a company does develop a new effective treatment or vaccine, it may [choose to] not file a patent but instead to keep the product and/or process as a trade secret, making it more difficult for governments to access that drug.” 

Fitzgerald also stated about the nature of Covid-19 vaccines exemptions, stating that it is not the key aspect in providing global access to Covid-19 vaccines as there are many other limitations that hinder this progress: “These include limitations in manufacturing capability, limits on the availability of starting materials, the necessity for technology and knowhow sharing – these matters are typically shared when license agreements are entered into – challenges raised by cold storage and the lack of funding for vaccine rollout (for example, education campaigns and personnel for administration), meaning that some low-income countries have had to discard vaccines that were delivered. Exempting Covid-19 vaccines from IP protection will not resolve these matters and may hinder responses to future global health emergencies. Accordingly, alternative solutions should continue to be sought.”

***Other Articles***

– You could check Required documents of filing trademark in USA here.

– You could see What needs to be done after registering a trademark in US? here.

– You could visit here to see What is use in commerce of filing trademark in USA.

– You could also check here to see Procedure of Trademark in USA.

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