A pandemic is a whole-of-society challenge that requires a whole-of-society response. Without IP-enabled investment in innovation and IP-enabled collaboration to catalyze that innovation, our ability to combat the next pandemic would be severely limited. IP laws will help us prepare and respond to future pandemics. "Intellectual property protection provides the legal foundation to turn competitive companies into collaborators." Related articles Thanks to agreements like these, vaccine manufacturers expect to produce 12.5 billion doses by the end of 2021 and an additional 17 billion doses by July 2022. AstraZeneca partnered with Siam Bioscience in Thailand and Serum Institute of India to manufacture doses of their COVID-19 vaccine, too. If governments start tampering with IP laws, this injects uncertainty and actually risks unwinding these existing manufacturing partnerships.įor example, Pfizer and BioNTech partnered with Brazil’s Eurofarma to manufacture doses of their COVID-19 vaccine for Latin America. To date, companies have forged more than 300 contractual manufacturing partnerships to scale up production and distribution of critical COVID-19 technologies, including vaccines. That’s because IP protection provides the legal foundation to turn competitive companies into collaborators. In fact, an effective IP system encourages companies to trust one another and work together. The assumption that IP is a barrier to information-sharing is wrong. Protecting IP makes the collaboration and partnership needed to scale up vaccine production possible. We need industry to pivot to finding solutions to new variants like Omicron and future challenges, and so maintaining transparent and predictable IP laws is a must. If those new medicines or vaccines don’t have value in the marketplace - because no one owns the rights to them - they’ll be left sitting in the lab. It typically costs a company $2.6 billion to bring a single new medicine from bench to bedside. investment in R&D comes from the private sector. If governments begin nullifying IP laws, it will become increasingly difficult for businesses to invest in new technologies, like a new drug compound or vaccine. In the event that new medical technologies succeed, strong IP laws mean investors’ end product can’t be stolen or misappropriated, at least for a short period of time. Strong IP protections provide investors with a chance to make a return on their risky and expensive endeavors, which often fail. The available COVID-19 vaccines are the product of decades of investment in research and development - investment that wouldn’t have been viable without strong IP protections. ![]() IP enables the investment and discovery of new cures, and waiving it would jeopardize innovation, including new/adapted vaccines to combat COVID-19 variants like Omicron. Here’s what that policy would actually mean for global public health efforts, now and in the future. But this would lead to significant, unintended consequences and is actually more likely to hurt not help pandemic response. Some governments, including the United States, are talking up a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property (IP) laws - such as patents and trade secrets - for COVID-19 vaccines, suggesting this would help boost manufacturing and vaccination rates. But there is debate as to how we do it, and regrettably much of that debate is centered on intellectual property rights. There’s no debate that we must bridge this divide. Manufacturers are on track to produce a global surplus of vaccine supplies in 2022, yet despite almost 40 million vaccinations now being administered daily, only 6.3% of people in the lowest-income countries have received a jab. ![]() Right now, nearly half of the world’s population is fully vaccinated. The new Omicron variant has laid clear the need for a better global approach on the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations. Waiving intellectual property rights for COVID vaccines could have ripple effects on innovators and investments across industries. Some governments, including the United States, are considering a proposal to waive intellectual property laws for COVID-19 vaccines.īut waiving intellectual property laws could jeopardize medical innovation, including the development of new or adapted vaccines to combat COVID-19 variants like Omicron.
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