Why in the news?
The United States of America has announced support for waiving intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines.
What is IP rights?
- The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of 1995 requires ratifying countries to adopt a minimum standard of intellectual property rights to protect creators and promote innovation.
- Patent represents a powerful intellectual property right, and is an exclusive monopoly granted by a government to an inventor for a limited, pre-specified time. It provides an enforceable legal right to prevent others from copying the invention.
- Patents can be either process patents or product patents.
- India moved from product patenting to process patenting in the 1970s, which enabled India to become a significant producer of generic drugs at global scale.
- But due to obligations arising out of the TRIPS Agreement, India had to amend the Patents Act in 2005, and switch to a product patents regime across the pharma, chemicals, and biotech sectors.
What is the demand?
- In October 2020, India and South Africa had asked the WTO to waive certain conditions of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that could impede timely access to affordable medical products (including vaccines) to combat Covid-19.
- According to a report by anti-poverty campaigners, rich countries are on course to have over a billion more doses of COVID-19 vaccines than they need, leaving poorer nations scrambling for leftover supplies as the world seeks to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
Opposition to IP waiver
- Microsoft founder Bill Gates has expressed reservations against tweaking IP rules and sharing Covid-19 vaccine technologies. He said that it would not be feasible for a company to move vaccines to a developing nation.
- They say that eliminating IP protections would undermine the global response to the pandemic including the ongoing efforts to tackle new variants.
- It could also create confusion that could potentially undermine public confidence in vaccine safety and create a barrier to information sharing.
- Eliminating protections would not speed up production.
Why Western Drug manufactures are wrong?
- The argument that these countries do not have the capacity to speedily produce vaccines goes against earlier moves towards a patents regime for generic drugs. Experts said
- Between 1972 and 2005, India had adopted process patenting rather than product patenting, and built up a huge generic industry.
- If western companies are interested in contracting Indian companies for manufacturing their vaccines in India, then how can they say you do not have the quality to produce on your own?
Benefits of IP waiver
- Most vaccines production is currently concentrated in developed countries; production by middle-income countries has been happening through licensing or technology transfer agreements.
- The IP waiver might open up space for production of Covid vaccines with emergency use authorisations (EUA) — such as those developed by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and Bharat Biotech — on a larger scale in middle-income countries.
(Source: Indian Express)
